Automatic installation - is there an advantage?

[Phil]

Thank you for reading this.

I installed Linux yesterday using the automatic option which puts the 
installation alongside Windows as follows:

phil at phil-desktop:~$ df -h
Filesystem      Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/sda5       1.3T  4.5G  1.2T   1% /
none            4.0K     0  4.0K   0% /sys/fs/cgroup
udev            3.8G  4.0K  3.8G   1% /dev
tmpfs           767M  1.1M  766M   1% /run
none            5.0M  4.0K  5.0M   1% /run/lock
none            3.8G   92K  3.8G   1% /run/shm
none            100M   24K  100M   1% /run/user

I've used this option several times to install Linux on older laptops, 
where Linux is the only OS, without a problem. When a new version comes 
along, restoring the home directory is an easy task because the backup 
only contains a few files, if any at all.

The following is an example of where I've installed Linux using the 
manual option. The /boot directory is 300MB and the swap is 4GB, the 
same as the ram size.

phil at Asus:~/Python$ df -h
Filesystem      Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/sda6        18G   12G  4.6G  72% /
none            4.0K     0  4.0K   0% /sys/fs/cgroup
udev            1.5G  4.0K  1.5G   1% /dev
tmpfs           304M  1.4M  303M   1% /run
none            5.0M  4.0K  5.0M   1% /run/lock
none            1.5G  756K  1.5G   1% /run/shm
none            100M   24K  100M   1% /run/user
/dev/sda7        18G  4.8G   12G  30% /usr/local
/dev/sda8        26G   24G  935M  97% /home
/dev/sda5        74G   48G   27G  64% /media/phil/495B-6D38

I've always used this option on my own computers so that I can protect 
my home directory and the usr/local directory during installation. 
Although I keep fresh backups the size of the backup could make 
restoring these directories a somewhat tedious task.

So my question is. Should I revert back to the manual option with 
partitions along the lines of those listed above and reinstall again or 
is there some advantage to leaving the system as it is? If there is an 
advantage what is the recommended location for my /usr/local/ files?

-- 
Regards,
Phil