Deprecated - Format Disks with DiskDrake
At this point,
you need to choose which partition(s) will be used for the
installation of your Mandriva Linux system. If partitions have
already been defined, either from a previous installation of
GNU/Linux or by another partitioning tool, you can use existing
partitions. Otherwise, hard drive partitions must be
defined.
To create
partitions, you must first select a hard drive. You can select the
disk for partitioning by clicking on hda
for the
first IDE drive, hdb
for the second,
sda
for the first SCSI drive and so on.
To partition
the selected hard drive, you can use these options:
Clear
all: this option deletes all partitions on the
selected hard drive
Auto allocate: this option
enables you to automatically create ext3 and swap partitions
in the free space of your hard drive
More: gives access to
additional features:
Save
partition table: saves the partition table to a
floppy. Useful for later partition-table recovery if necessary. It
is strongly recommended that you perform this step.
Restore
partition table: allows you to restore a previously
saved partition table from a floppy disk.
Rescue
partition table: if your partition table is damaged,
you can try to recover it using this option. Please be careful and
remember that it doesn't always work.
Reload
partition table: discards all changes and reloads the
partition table that was originally on the hard drive.
Removable
media auto-mounting: unchecking this option will force
users to manually mount and unmount removable media such as
floppies and CD-ROMs.
Wizard:
use this option if you wish to use a wizard to partition your hard
drive. This is recommended if you do not have a good understanding
of partitioning.
Undo:
use this option to cancel your changes.
Toggle
between normal/expert mode: allows additional actions
on partitions (type, options, format) and gives more information
about the hard drive.
Done:
when you are finished partitioning your hard drive, this will save
your changes back to disk.
When defining the size of a partition,
you can finely set the partition size by using the
Arrow keys of your keyboard.
Note: you can
reach any option using the keyboard. Navigate through the
partitions using Tab and the
Up/Down arrows.
When a partition is selected, you can
use:
Ctrl-c
to create a new partition (when an empty partition is
selected)
Ctrl-d
to delete a partition
Ctrl-m
to set the mount point
To get
information about the different file system types available,
please read the ext2FS chapter from the
Reference Manual.
If you
are installing on a PPC machine, you will want to create a small
HFS bootstrap
partition of at least 1MB which
will be used by the yaboot
bootloader. If you opt to make the partition a bit larger, say
50MB, you may find it a useful place to store a spare kernel
and ramdisk images for emergency boot situations.