GParted Partition Editor

Introduction

These instructions show how to create a single Linux partition on a blank hard drive.

Begin by starting GParted: from the Tools menu, select 'Partition editor'.

Main screen

/dev/hda is a blank 64MB hard drive. 'hda' indicates that it's the first IDE hard drive.

Create new partition

Select 'New' from the Partition menu...

Set disklabel

A blank, unpartitioned disk must first be labelled - press 'Create'.

Confirm disklabel

Since the drive is blank, there's nothing to erase!

Create new partition

This is the main partition window - from here you can create new partitions and select the filesystems to use. The default settings use the entire space on the drive. This example creates only one partition: make sure it's a primary partition with an ext2 filesystem.

Apply operations

GParted stores all pending operations in a list (shown at the bottom of the screen), and only when you press the 'Apply' button do the changes become permanent.

Apply operations to harddisk

A confirmation requester... Pressing 'Apply' will make all changes permament!

Applying pending operations

A progress bar shows the operations being applied, and on completion this message should be displayed.

The steps above will both partition and format the hard drive.

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