Chapter 2. Disks and Partitions

Structure of a Hard Disk
Sectors
Partitions
Define the Structure of your Disk
Conventions for Naming Disks and Partitions

This chapter contains information for users that are performing an expert installation of Mandrake Linux or for those that simply wish to know more about the technical details underlying their system.

This section provides a complete description of the PC partitioning scheme, so it will be most useful if you will be manually configuring the partitions of your hard drive. Because the installer will do all of this automatically, it is not critical to understand everything if you perform a standard installation. However, if you're going to perform an expert install, the information in this chapter will be important.