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 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:
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 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:
Also make sure all partitions are created using an even number of megabytes. |
Here you see the Linux partitions that have been found on your computer. If you don't agree with the DrakX suggestions, you can change the mount points yourself.
To the left of the drop-down menus is a list of available partitions. For
example: sda
is a hard drive - and
5
is a partition number, followed
by the (capacity, mount point, filesystem type) of the
partition.
If you have several partitions, you can choose various different
mount points from the drop down menu, such as
/
, /home
and
/var
. You can even make your own mount points, for
instance /video
for a partition where you want to store
your films, or perhaps /Data
for all your data files.
For any partitions that you don't need to make use of, you can leave the mount point field blank.
If you make any changes here, ensure you still have a |
If you are not sure what to choose, click Previous to go back and then tick Custom disk partitioning, where you can click on a partition to see its type and size. |
If you are sure the mount points are correct, click on Next, and choose whether you only want to format the partition suggested by DrakX, or more.
Modify the layout of your disk(s) here. You can remove or create partitions, change the filesystem or size of a partition and even view their details before you start.
There is a tab at the top for every detected hard disk (or other storage
device, like a USB key). In the screenshot above there are two available
devices: sda
and sdb
.
For all other actions: click on the desired partition first. Then view it, or choose a filesystem and a mount point, resize it or wipe it. Expert mode provides more options such as to label (name) a partition, or to choose a partition type.
Continue until you have adjusted everything to your satisfaction, then click Done when you're ready.
|
Here you can choose which partition(s) you wish to format. Any data on partitions not marked for formatting will be preserved.
Usually, at least the partitions that DrakX selected need to be formatted.
Click on Advanced to choose the partitions you want to check for so-called bad blocks
When you are confident about the selections, click on Next to continue.