Partitioning your Disk

You now need to decide where you want to install Mageia on your hard drive. If your hard drive is empty or if an existing operating system is using all the available space you will have to re-partition the drive. Basically, partitioning a hard drive means to logically divide it in order to create the space required for your new Mageia system.

Because the process of partitioning a hard drive is usually irreversible and can lead to data loss, partitioning can be intimidating and stressful for the inexperienced user. Fortunately, DrakX includes a wizard which simplifies this process. Before continuing with this step, read through the rest of this section and, above all, take your time.

Depending on the configuration of your hard drive, several options are available:

Use free space. This option will perform an automatic partitioning of your blank drive(s). If you use this option there will be no further prompts.
Use existing partitions. The wizard has detected one or more existing Linux partitions on your hard drive. If you want to use them, choose this option. You will then be asked to choose the mount points associated with each of the partitions. The legacy mount points are selected by default, and for the most part it's a good idea to keep them. You will also be asked to choose the partitions to be formatted or preserved.
Use the free space on the Windows partition. If Windows^® is installed on your hard drive, you might have to create free space for GNU/Linux. To do so, you can delete your Windows^® partition and data (see the “Erase entire disk” solution below) or resize your FAT or NTFS partition. Resizing can be performed without the loss of any data, provided you've previously defragmented the Windows^® partition. Backing up your data is strongly recommended. Using this option is recommended if you want to use both Mageia and Windows^® on the same computer in a dual boot configuration.

Before choosing this option, please understand that after this procedure, the size of your Windows^® partition will be smaller than when you started, which means you will have less free space to store your data or to install new software.

Erase entire disk. If you want to delete all data and all partitions present on your hard drive and replace them with Mageia, choose this option. Be warned that you won't be able to undo this operation after you confirm.

	Warning
	If you choose this option, all data on your disk will be deleted.

Remove Windows(TM). This option appears when the hard drive is entirely taken by Windows^®. Choosing this option will simply erase everything on the drive, partitioning everything from scratch.

	Warning
	If you choose this option, all data on your disk will be lost.

Custom disk partitioning. Choose this option if you want to manually partition your hard drive. Be careful: it is a powerful but dangerous choice and you can very easily lose all your data. That's why this option is only recommended if you have performed custom disk partitioning before, and have enough GNU/Linux experience to know what you are doing. For more instructions on how to use the DiskDrake utility, refer to the Managing Your Partitions section in the Starter Guidethe Managing Your Partitions section in the Starter Guide.