Howtogeek posted an article about choosing a partition scheme for your Linux PC

Partitions are divisions in the formatting of the hard disk. It’s a logical – as opposed to a physical – division, so you can edit and manipulate them for various purposes. Think breaking a disk into two configuration parts. Partitions are really handy because they act as a sandbox. If you have a 1 TB hard drive partitioned into a 250 GB partition and a 750 GB partition, what you have on the latter will not affect the other, and vice versa. You can share one of those partitions on the network and never worry about people accessing information on the other. One could have Windows installed, riddled with viruses and trojans. The other could be running a very obsolete, security-hole addled Linux installation. Never shall the two interfere, unless either you make them or the hard drive itself physically dies.

The other useful thing is that you can have multiple partitions, each formatted with a different “file system.” A file system is a formatting of the disk into a table that the operating system can read, interpret, and write to. Only have one hard drive? That’s okay, because you can still install multiple operating systems on it without actually having another physical disk.

  How to Choose a Partition Scheme for Your Linux PC