Partitioning 240 GB SSD for Ubuntu Linux, SMB share & Renaming Drives

Hey guys:

Can you give me a suggested partition arrangement for putting Linux on a 240 GB Solid State Drive?

and even how to do it.

Somehow I get the feeling that there should be at least 3 partitions.
An Ext3 for Linux itself
A small, like 5 or 6 GB partition for a minimal Linux system
and say a 20 GB? partition as NTFS.

Ideally, I'd like to put the main file system, e.g /usr/home somewhere else and possibly on it's own partition.

So, I'd like some help as to how to do it.

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I also need some hints for how to set up access through windows networking.

Also, any easy way to change the name of a thumb drive when they all show up as /media/KINGSTON?

I have been running Ubuntu 12.04 LTS from a CD since June. So, now it's time to move to a HD or in this case a Solid State SATA 2.5" drive.

I would use ext2 because SSDs have a finite amount of writing they can tolerate, and writing a journal in ext3 creates some extra writing. For the same reason, you probably do not need a swap partition usually used by Linux. Other measures may be taken to minimize writes to SSD, such as mounting /var on a ram disk. Mounting the SSD partitons with "noatime" attribute is a good idea to prevent lots of writing associated with keeping track of access time.

I'm not sure if Ubuntu allows these things or not. I tried to install it recently and it looked very pushy to me.

We are actually talking about one of these drives (Kingston E50): https://www.amazon.com/Kingston-Digital-2-5-Inch-SE50S37-240G/dp/B00EUB78MS/ref=pd_sim_sbs_pc_2

I normally run Debian on all my home and engineering work servers that I setup. This is their SSD Wiki page. https://wiki.debian.org/SSDOptimization