Suggested Partitioning

In this screen you can see the content of your hard drive(s) along with the DrakX partitioning proposals for where to install Mageia.

The actual options available from those shown below will vary according to the layout and content of your particular hard drive(s).

Main Options

Use Existing Partitions

If this option is available, then existing Linux compatible partitions have been found and may be used for the installation.
Use Free Space

If you have unused space on your hard drive then this option will use it for your new Mageia installation.
Use Free Space on a Windows Partition

If you have unused space on an existing Windows partition, the installer may offer to use it. This can be a useful way of making room for your new Mageia installation, but is a risky operation so you should make sure you have backed up all important files!

With this option, the installer displays the remaining Windows partition in light blue and the proposed Mageia partition in dark blue with their intended sizes just underneath. You have the option to modify these sizes by clicking and dragging the gap between both partitions. See the following screenshot:

Erase and use Entire Disk

This option will allocate the entire drive for Mageia


	This will erase ALL data on the selected hard drive. Take care! If you intend to use part of the disk for something else, or you already have data on the drive that you are not prepared to lose, then do not use this option.


	Note that this involves shrinking the size of the Windows partition. The partition must be "clean", meaning that Windows must have closed down correctly the last time it was used. It must also have been defragmented, although this is not a guarantee that all files in the partition have been moved out of the area that is about to be used. It is highly recommended to back up your personal files.

Custom Disk Partitioning

This gives you complete control over the placing of the installation on your hard drive(s).

If you are not using the Custom disk partitioning option, then the installer will allocate the available space according to the following rules:

If the total available space is less than 50 GB, then only one partition is created. This will be the / (root) partition.
If the total available space is greater than 50 GB, then three partitions are created
- 6/19 of the total available place is allocated to / with a maximum of 50 GB
- 1/19 is allocated to swap with a maximum of 4 GB
- the rest (at least 12/19) is allocated to /home

This means that from 160 GB or greater available space, the installer will create three partitions:

50 GB for /
4 GB for swap
and the remainder for /home

If you are using a UEFI system, the ESP (EFI System Partition) will be automatically detected - or created if it does not exist yet - and mounted on /boot/EFI. The Custom disk partitioning option is the only one that allows to check it has been correctly done.

If you are using a Legacy (also known as BIOS) system with a GPT partitioned disk, you need to create a BIOS boot partition if it doesn't already exist. It should be about 1 MiB with no mount point. It can be created with the Installer, under Custom disk partitioning, like any other partition. Be sure to select “BIOS boot partition” for filesystem type.

See DiskDrake for information on how to proceed.

Some newer drives are now using 4096 byte logical sectors, instead of the previous standard of 512. Due to lack of available hardware, the partitioning tool used in the installer has not been tested with such a drive.

Some SSD devices now use an erase block size over 1 MB. If you have such a device we suggest that you partition the drive in advance, using an alternative partitioning tool like gparted, and to use the following settings:

Align to = MiB
Free space preceding (MiB) = 2

Also make sure all partitions are created using an even number of megabytes.