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There may come a time when you want to modify your hard drive(s). You might want to nuke them all, low-level-format (or not), and start again with fresh partitions, or - you're completely sick of Windows and you want to install Linux. Now you're talking.
If you want to try Linux on your computer you have a few choices.
- try out of of those terrific Live CD Distributions. Run Linux from your CD-ROM making no changes to your computer.
- Re-size your large windows partition to make room for more enabling you to install Linux
and "dual-boot"; pick your OS at boot time.
- Nuke Windows completely and your partition. Make some new ones.
WARNING: This page is a bit askew in Opera.
Creating partitions on your hard drive is almost trivially easy - but don't feel bad or stupid if you mess up. Choosing the "correct" partition sizes today may be motivated by an all together different set of requirements than tomorrow.
Besides, you're the prudent type. You already saved all of the data from your Windows install that you want to keep. It's on a disc right now - so you may feel free to play around.
For those of you friendly with your keyboard, and who isn't, right? - you can check this section from a brilliantly put together how-to that I completely ripped off of this page, but they write that it's cool, thanks you guys.
This tutorial that you're reading utilizes a terrific Utility disc, it's the System Rescue Disc many have heard me tout in the past. I cannot live without this marvelous tool and we'll be using it. Go ahead and download the disc and burn it. We'll boot to it soon.
------------------Let's do this thing------------------------
[ See Getting into BIOS ]
Boot to the System Rescue Disc you just made. You will see the following prompt: First boot prompt - system rescue disc type: menu, then enter. Next up you'll see another prompt, arrow right, then down 3 to chose the System Rescue option:
Following, the disc will boot. In a moment you will be at the following prompt:
type: # run_qtparted, hit enter
You'll need to choose your mouse type next. For a ps/2 simply type 3, then enter. In another moment the program QTParted will be open and we can now create some partitions.
A partition already highlighted. We're nuking these.
You simply click on the left side's listing of hda to make the partitions on that hard drive appear on the right side, as in the image.
Right clicking on any listed partition will allow you to select delete from the menu you'll get. If you have a hard drive with only one partition created and available (unused) space, you can simply click on the partition listed as FREE, and right click to choose "create". We're doing that next anyway.
After you have deleted all of your existing partitions you must "commit" the deed. In the Menu bar you now choose to do so. It's under the Devices tab. Choose "commit", then choose yes at the warning.
Now, let's make some partitions, shall we? For simplicity and all that, and because we're not Guru's yet, let's make 3 PRIMARY partitions. We'll make a "/" partition for your system files, a "/home" partition where the user's will store their stuff, and a small swap partition.
There are about a zillion configurations. You could make LOGICAL partitions for any and all of the system directories that your Linux system will use. For example, some folks like to have their "/usr" directory on its own partition. Terrific, more power to you. Today, we're making 3 and keeping it simple.
* Create the Partitions
On the listed FREE partition that is now clearly visible to you on the right side window of QTParted, right-click and choose "create". You'll get a dialog box. See the following thumbnails (click 'em) for a quick graphical run through of creating your different partitions:
   
Following the creation, go back to the Devices file menu and choose to "commit" again. Click OK past the warning and your partitions are created and formatted with their file systems. See, it's all very easy. Of course some things can go wrong. As I was completing this task to get some screen captures, my /home partition couldn't be formatted "ext3" for some reason. I got some error. So, I simply chose the Reiser file system to get through the process. That's why in the finished screen capture coming up you will see that the partition has a blue border in the graphical display.
I never got such an error when doing this for real. Right now I am doing this through an emulator. Emulators kick-ass.
After you have created your partitions you must make the first one (hda1) "active" or start-able. Simply click on the partition, and from the menu choose "Make Active", then commit the task. After that process complete you are finished:
Exit the program. You may now choose to "reboot" at the command prompt you return to and pop in your Debian GNU/Linux installation disc. You're well on your way now....See Linux Tutorial: Graphical Debian Installation Guide machiner 8 may 05
Check out this brilliant fdisk tutorial section that I ripped off: ( top of page )5.1. fdisk usage
fdisk is started by typing (as root)
fdisk
device at the command prompt.
device might be something like /dev/hda or /dev/sda (see Section 2.1.1). The basic
fdisk commands you need are:
p
print the partition table
n
create a new partition
d
delete a partition
q
quit without saving changes
w
write the new partition table and exit
Changes you make to the partition table do not take effect until you issue the write (w) command.
Here is a sample partition table:
Disk /dev/hdb: 64 heads, 63 sectors, 621 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 4032 * 512 bytes
Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/hdb1 * 1 184 370912+ 83 Linux
/dev/hdb2 185 368 370944 83 Linux
/dev/hdb3 369 552 370944 83 Linux
/dev/hdb4 553 621 139104 82 Linux swap
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The first line shows the geometry of your hard drive. It may not be
physically accurate, but you can accept it as though it were. The hard
drive in this example is made of 32 double-sided platters with one
head on each side (probably not true). Each platter has 621 concentric
tracks. A 3-dimensional track (the same track on all disks) is called
a cylinder. Each track is divided into 63 sectors. Each sector
contains 512 bytes of data. Therefore the block size in the partition
table is 64 heads * 63 sectors * 512 bytes er...divided by 1024. (See
4 for discussion on
problems with this calculation.) The start and end values are cylinders.
5.2. Four primary partitions
The overview:
Decide on the size of your swap space (see Section 4.4) and where it ought to go (see Section 4.4.3).
Divide up the remaining space for the three other partitions.
Example:
I start fdisk from the shell prompt:
which indicates that I am using the second drive on my IDE controller.
(See Section 2.1.) When I print the (empty) partition table,
I just get configuration information.
Command (m for help): p
Disk /dev/hdb: 64 heads, 63 sectors, 621 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 4032 * 512 bytes
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I knew that I had a 1.2Gb drive, but now I really know: 64 * 63 * 512
* 621 = 1281982464 bytes. I decide to reserve 128Mb of that space for
swap, leaving 1153982464. If I use one of my primary partitions for
swap, that means I have three left for ext2 partitions. Divided
equally, that makes for 384Mb per partition. Now I get to work.
Command (m for help): n
Command action
e extended
p primary partition (1-4)
p
Partition number (1-4): 1
First cylinder (1-621, default 1):<RETURN>
Using default value 1
Last cylinder or +size or +sizeM or +sizeK (1-621, default 621): +384M
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Next, I set up the partition I want to use for swap:
Command (m for help): n
Command action
e extended
p primary partition (1-4)
p
Partition number (1-4): 2
First cylinder (197-621, default 197):<RETURN>
Using default value 197
Last cylinder or +size or +sizeM or +sizeK (197-621, default 621): +128M
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Now the partition table looks like this:
Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/hdb1 1 196 395104 83 Linux
/dev/hdb2 197 262 133056 83 Linux
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I set up the remaining two partitions the same way I did the first.
Finally, I make the first partition boot-able:
Command (m for help): a
Partition number (1-4): 1
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And I make the second partition of type swap:
Command (m for help): t
Partition number (1-4): 2
Hex code (type L to list codes): 82
Changed system type of partition 2 to 82 (Linux swap)
Command (m for help): p
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The end result:
Disk /dev/hdb: 64 heads, 63 sectors, 621 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 4032 * 512 bytes
Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/hdb1 * 1 196 395104+ 83 Linux
/dev/hdb2 197 262 133056 82 Linux swap
/dev/hdb3 263 458 395136 83 Linux
/dev/hdb4 459 621 328608 83 Linux
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Finally, I issue the write command (w) to write the table on the disk. |
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The \'/home\' partion gave an mkfs.ext3 failure.
I created it again, right-clicked it, chose \'Format\' and all went wel. javascript:ac_smilie(\':)\')