Install/Prepare Disk

Install Guide: Prepare Disk

Install Guide, Chapter 2

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In this section, you will need to choose a disk format to use for booting and partitioning -- either MBR or UEFI.

MBR is the traditional way of booting a PC. It works by installing executable code on the boot sector of your hard drive, which starts the boot process. When you use MBR to boot, you must have BIOS booting enabled in your BIOS, use traditional MBR partitions on your disk which are created using the fdisk tool.

UEFI is the more modern way to boot a PC. It works using a boot loader that is built into your computer. Boot entries are created and stored in your computer's non-volatile memory. When you use UEFI to boot, you must have UEFI enabled in your BIOS, and use more modern GPT partitions which are created using the gdisk tool.

Generally, it's usually safe to pick the legacy MBR method for system disks under 2TB in size and most modern PC systems support MBR as well as UEFI booting.

   Note

For more information on differences between MBR and UEFI, see our Disk Formats page for an overview of each option and the trade-offs.

But First...

Before doing anything to your disks, make sure you are partitioning the right one. Use the lsblk command to view a list of all block devices on your system, as well as partitions on these block devices:

root # lsblk
NAME          MAJ:MIN RM  SIZE RO TYPE MOUNTPOINT
sda             8:0    0  1.8T  0 disk 
├─sda1          8:1    0  512M  0 part 
├─sda2          8:2    0    8G  0 part [SWAP]
└─sda3          8:3    0  1.8T  0 part 
  ├─main-root 254:0    0  500G  0 lvm  /
  └─main-data 254:1    0  1.3T  0 lvm  /home

   Note

If you're not sure which disks are which, you can use lsblk -o MODEL,NAME,SIZE to show the device models matching the /dev/sd? names.

Make sure you will not be overwriting any important data and that you have chosen the correct /dev/sd? device. Above, you can see that SATA disk sda contains three partitions, sda1, sda2 and sda3, and that sda3 contains LVM volumes. If you are using an NVME disk, then you may see nvme0n1 as your disk, and your partitions (if any exist yet) will be named nvme0n1p1, nvme0n1p2, etc. If you are installing on microSD Card for Raspberry Pi, your disk will likely be mmcblk0 and partitions will have suffixes p1, p2, etc.

Once you've double-checked your target block device and made sure you'll be partitioning the correct disk, proceed to the next step.

Install Guide, Chapter 2

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