Manjaro KDE (btrfs) Dual Boot, HDD & SSD, recommended partition setup

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Hey everyone, new to forums and new to arch based distros.
I used ubuntu based systems for around 7 years, mainly Linux Mint, and for 3 years or so I’ve been using Windows 10 because I needed some software not ideal for Linux, but that’s not the case anymore and I want to go back to using Linux as my main and keep Win in dual boot just in case, convinience and a couple of specific uses.

So here’s the deal, I’m using an MSI laptop with a Intel i7-850h processor, 16Gb ram, GTX 1060 Mobile GPU, Samsung Evo 970 plus 500Gb NVME M.2 SSD + a 7200rpm 1Tb HDD.
I installed Manjaro on Dual boot, with a root / partition of 60Gb and a 70Gb for /home on the SSD formated as btrfs, because I’ve broken my system before and wanted to be prepared and not have to use large backups like with rsync.
I left 32gb for overprovisioning and the rest for Windows because even after cleaning up and moving files it still needs space, right now its using 113GB of 280 of its partition, theres also a recovery or Bios partition of 21.58GB. I’ve never been sure about that one, but its there.
On the HDD I created a large swap partition so I can hibernate, believing I could use it, but yeah, no, I’ll probably resize so I add a 2gb swap on SSD.
I also have a NTFS 730Gb partition for overall file storage and sharing between both OS’s, a 60Gb ext4, a 80Gb btrfs, these I originally intended to keep as ext4 for either trying a different distro or for pooling storage, I believe btrfs can do that without raid, not really sure, because using raid would randomly use ssd or hdd and limit the speed to the lower one if I’m not mistaken, or I also considered using the partitions on the hdd and the currently /home one to assign to /usr, wich I believe it’s where most package files are stored, /home, /var or /etc, not sure of what combination would be the best. In the HDD

I´m really not sure of my partitioning scheme, even with 16Gb of ram, I’d rather have some swap, I’ve been thinking and researching what could be better for me, using a single btrfs partition on the SSD and using symlink to regular files on either btrfs, ext4 or ntfs (ntfs for shared files with win10 definetly, like movies. steam library, .exe that I would want to run on both); or maybe keep separate partitions for root and home, in case I break something really bad and it’s more convenient reinstalling than using snapshots, or to keep the snapshots with a smaller size, though I believe even if home is on the same partition as root, I can exclude it from the snapshot, either way, separate partitions would help manage their individual snapshots.
I don’t know if I should use partitons on the HDD dedicated to a directory like home, usr, var, etc. or what the best setup would be.

Sorry for the long explanation and lack of structure, I’m still going in circles in my mind with the topic.

TL;DR: 512Gb NVME (465Gb actually usable), 1TB HDD (931gb usable), dual boot Win10 + Manjaro KDE btrfs, for the moment Wind would have to keep around 300gb, and keep 32gb for overprovisioning, I’m looking for recommendations on what partitions to use on SSD, what (if any) on HDD, either dedicated or for files, use symlinks, pooling or something similar, I definetely want to keep a NTFS partiton in auto mount to share files.

Overall, what partition scheme and overall setup would you recommend for dual boot Win10 + Manjaro on btfs, SSD 512Gb (nvme) + HDD 1Tb?
With Win10 on SSD and at least root (/) on SSD

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Making things simple usually works fine:

  • / on SSD – next to Windows and EFI partition (if relevant)
  • /home on HDD
  • /data on HDD for sharing files with Windows – prefer using exFAT instead of NTFS, as the former has a better support on Linux than the former.
  • Swap file or partition on SSD

Regarding Btrfs snapshots, by default the installer will use scheme compatible with Timeshift, which is also installed by default, and does not include user files (/home) by default.

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That was the original idea, but I ended up thinking too much about what it’s installed on /home and if it was worth having some files on the ssd to give priority, but yeah, you are right, it’s overthinking it, not the first time.
Thank you, a second opinion helps a lot.
Just two more questions, should I format /home as btrfs so I can use the snapshots once in a while and/or have better compatibility with root, or is it better to use ext4 to have a little improvement on read/write speed? And what swap size would you recommend?

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You find good Information about Btrfs in the wiki

and in

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The file system on a partition works independently from other partitions. There is no “compatibility improvement” to gain by using the same file system across multiple partitions.
AFAIK you won’t actually feel any difference in speed whether you use Btrfs or ext4.

AFAIK, if you intend to use hibernation, you would need a Swap at least as big as your amount of RAM.
Otherwise, you can use a (relatively) small amount of Swap, even none considering your 16GB of RAM. Although that depends on how memory extensive you use your system…

If you don’t know the right amount of Swap to use, you can opt for a Swap file, which size is more easily reconfigurable than a partition.