Hey everyone! I'm getting ready to dive into Arch Linux this weekend and I'm running into a bit of a snag with the disk partitioning part. So far, booting from my USB is working nicely, but when I check my current disk partitions with the command 'fdisk -l', I see the following:
- /dev/sda1: 650M - Windows recovery environment
- /dev/sda2: 260M - EFI System
- /dev/sda3: 128M - Microsoft reserved
- /dev/sda4: 905.2G - Microsoft basic data
- /dev/sda5: 1001M - Windows recovery environment
- /dev/sda6: 24.4G - Microsoft basic data
So here's my question: Do I need to reset everything and start fresh with a new partitioning scheme, or can I just allocate my boot, swap, and root partitions within sda4? Also, sda6 seems a bit redundant, since it shares the same label as sda4. I'm working with an older Windows laptop that has a 1TB drive, and I have no clue how it was set up before. Any advice would be greatly appreciated!
3 Answers
You should definitely check out the Arch Wiki for the 'fdisk' command; it has all the details on repartitioning your drive. It's super informative and can help guide you through the process.
Concerning your question about sda6: it does seem redundant since it appears to have the same function as sda4. If you're not familiar with how partitions work, I would suggest playing around with virtualization first to gain some experience before moving to the actual installation!
If you’re okay with losing the current data, the best route would be to create a new empty GPT partition table by using the 'g' option in 'fdisk', and then lay down the partitions you actually need for your Arch setup.
I totally get what you're saying, but I'm just trying to learn here! No need to make it sound so daunting.