8.2. Partitioning a Hard Disk, Formatting a Partition

Regarding the principles referred to above and as far as we are concerned in this section, there are two things to note: a hard disk is divided into partitions and each of these partitions hosts a file system. Your brand new hard disk has neither, so that is where you have to start, beginning with the partitioning. In order to do that, you must be root.

First, you have to know the "name" of your hard disk (i.e.: what file designates it). Suppose you set it up as a slave on your primary IDE interface, it will then be /dev/hdb.[1]. Please refer to the User Guide's "Managing your partitions" section, which explains how to partition a disk. Note that DiskDrake will also create the file systems for you.

Notes

[1]

How to find the name of a disk is explained in the Installation guide.


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