Partition types

Partition types

During the installation, the most important thing is your partition layout. You should always try to be professional when it comes to computers. A lot of people go to school, spend thousands of dollars and never learn the basics. Even most certified technicians don't know how to format a hard drive correctly. But unfortunately employers always look for that piece of paper, (like if that piece of paper will do the work). Trust me, when you place applications at a big company that's the first thing they ask you.

Remember! Practice makes experience. If you do something wrong during this installation, don't worry, everyone makes mistakes. If people wouldn't make mistakes; then nothing would be improved. You will probably be better off if you do your installation on a clean hard drive without any operating system on it; otherwise, you might have to backup your files in case things go wrong. If you follow my instruction “as is” you won't have problems. If you have formatted a hard drive before, then you have the idea of how a hard drive is structured, or at least know how to make it operational.

* Before a hard drive can be used, it must be formatted. *

But what is a format?

A format is a unique preparation of a hard drive. It tells the operating system how to access the hard drive by creating a file system. First you have to tell the system what type of hard drive you have or it won't work properly. The system must have the correct parameters in the BIOS chip, such as Heads, Cylinder, and Sectors in order to recognize the correct size and of course enable the LBA (Large Block Addressing) option in the bios for big hard drives. If you are installing a new hard drive, you must make sure that you have the correct setting before you start formatting your drive, or installing your new operating system.

Note: if you are wiping out an already installed hard drive you don't have to go through these settings.

Once the settings are correct you, start by creating partitions and then format. You can create a single partition or multiple partitions, the truth is that you must make the first primary partition active in order to boot. If it is not active, even if it is primary, it will not boot.