Partitioning & Formatting

TIP

In the following X and Y are placeholders. Replace them with your corresponding device and partition number. "sd" could also be different if you don't connect your hard drive via SCSI/SATA

Partitioning

TIP

If you want to do disk encryption, go to the encryption page. It will guide you back to the main installation when needed.

TIP

Also see this awesome video about partitioning by EF - Linux Made Simple

List partition table

To get an overview you can list your partition table to find out the device you want to use

fdisk -l

Start partitioning tool

▶️ Text-based

fdisk /dev/sdX

▶️ UEFI only text-based

gdisk /dev/sdX

▶️ Graphical (Recommended for beginners)

cfdisk /dev/sdX

▶️ UEFI only Graphical (Recommended for beginners)

cgdisk /dev/sdX

Create partitions

Decide partition table type

• BIOS: You can use both but this guide uses DOS
• UEFI: You need to use GPT

GPT (UEFI)

Needed	Partition	Partition type	Mount point
✔️	/dev/sdXY	EFI system partition	/mnt/boot/efi
❌	/dev/sdXY	Linux swap	-
✔️	/dev/sdXY	Linux	/mnt
❌	/dev/sdXY	Linux	/mnt/home

DOS (BIOS)

Needed	Partition	Partition type	Mount point	Flags
❌	/dev/sdXY	Linux swap	-	-
✔️	/dev/sdXY	Linux	/mnt	Bootable
❌	/dev/sdXY	Linux	/mnt/home	-

GPT (BIOS)

Size recommendations

EFI system

• At least: 150MB
• Recommended: 300MB

Swap

Taken from https://docs.voidlinux.org/installation/live-images/partitions.html

System RAM	Recommended swap space	Swap space if using hibernation
< 2GB	2x the amount of RAM	3x the amount of RAM
2-8GB	Equal to amount of RAM	2x the amount of RAM
8-64GB	At least 4GB	1.5x the amount of RAM
64GB	At least 4GB	Hibernation not recommended

Format partitions

EFI system partition

mkfs.fat -F32 -n EFI /dev/sdXY

Create root filesystem

💽 This will create the filesystem where the system will be installed on

mkfs.ext4 -L ROOT /dev/sdXY

Create home partition filesystem

🏠 If you created a separate home partition

mkfs.ext4 -L HOME /dev/sdXY

Create Swap

mkswap -L SWAP /dev/sdXY
swapon /dev/sdXY