How to partition for Windows/Ubuntu dual boot on same SSD

I have a 500GB SSD in which i would like to have both Windows and Ubuntu. My plan is to have something similar to this: Windows 8.1 and ubuntu 14.04 Uefi boot

• an efi partition (created by windows installer) which will have Grub as bootloader
• 150GB ntfs for Windows
• 15GB ext4 for Ubuntu (root)
• 35GB ext4 for Ubuntu (home)
• ~8-16GB swap for Ubuntu (I have 16GB RAM)
• ~284-292GB ntfs for Data shared for both Windows and Ubuntu

My current setup is

• 200GB ntfs Windows

• 300GB ntfs for Data

I plan to shrink both the Windows and the data partiton in order to achieve my desired plan.

My questions:

1. Does the order of partitions matter? Does it matter if the ubuntu partitions are not at the end/beggining of the drive? Does the swap partition behaves better if its the last/first partition?

2. Can I use the shared NTFS Data partition between windows and ubuntu without encountering problems?

3. Do I have enough space for my ubuntu /home partition (thinking that I'll have access to the ntfs shared partition)?

Edit: Laptop, Asus N56jr, i7, 16Gb Ram, SSD samsung 850 evo 500gb

Windows 8.1 and Ubuntu 14.04

Solution 1:

1. If your disk uses MBR partition table, then both Windows and Linux root partitions should be in first 3 partitions on disk (if you want to use extended/logical partitions) or in first 4 partitions (but then you cannot use extended/logical partitions, because MBR is limited to max number of 4 "normal" partitions). If your disks uses GPT partition table, then the order of partitions doesn't matter. On SSD disks it also doesn't matter if your swap partition is first or last, SSD disks should read/write all data at the same speed.
2. Yes, you can, but if you mount that partition on Linux, then hibernate Linux and start Windows, you may lose some data when you run Linux next time. You should remember to not start a system if some partition is mounted on another, hibernated system (Ext4 partitions are quite save, because Windows can't mount them without some 3rd party software).
3. It depends on what you want to store in you home directory, but if you have most data on your NTFS partition, then it should be OK. Steam installs all the games to your home directory by default, so you should create a Steam Library on another partition and use it instead of default one.

Solution 2:

Your partitioning is reasonable.

1. Order of partitions does not matter.

2. Yes, you can.

3. It depends on what you will install to Ubuntu /home partition. E.g. steam games are installed there. But generally it must be enough in most cases.