Installation - Confused about GPT and MBR
by gusgorman from LinuxQuestions.org on (#53HY4)
Hello,
I've been using Slackware since 2003, but I've probably only installed it 3 times. I tend to just get a machine, install Slackware, and then use to till the machine reaches its end of life. I've never had any problems whatsover with the installation process, but things have moved on a bit and I'm a bit ignorant about GPT, hence this post.
I'm sitting here with a new laptop with a trial version of Windows 10 on it, which I am wiping completely and replacing with Slackware current.
I was expecting there to just be a 500G SSD drive, but running parted -l tells me there is also a 16G scsi drive showing up as /dev/sda. If I run gdisk -l /dev/sda it tells me:
Quote:
The SSD drive also shows up as expected, with a gpt partition table, a fat32 boot partition called "EFI system partition" and then the other ntfs drives.
Why is this 16Gig drive there? Is that normal on laptops?
Should I use gdisk to create a blank GPT on /dev/sda?
Should I just format and partition the SSD drive as per normal and then proceed with the installation? (will I need to use cgdisk instead of cfdisk?)
Thanks!
edit: sorry I didn't see there was a separate installation sub-forum.
I've been using Slackware since 2003, but I've probably only installed it 3 times. I tend to just get a machine, install Slackware, and then use to till the machine reaches its end of life. I've never had any problems whatsover with the installation process, but things have moved on a bit and I'm a bit ignorant about GPT, hence this post.
I'm sitting here with a new laptop with a trial version of Windows 10 on it, which I am wiping completely and replacing with Slackware current.
I was expecting there to just be a 500G SSD drive, but running parted -l tells me there is also a 16G scsi drive showing up as /dev/sda. If I run gdisk -l /dev/sda it tells me:
Quote:
| MBR: MBR only BSD: not present APM: not present GPT: present Found valid MBR and GPT. Which do you want to use? 1 - MBR 2 - GPT 3 - Create blank GPT |
Why is this 16Gig drive there? Is that normal on laptops?
Should I use gdisk to create a blank GPT on /dev/sda?
Should I just format and partition the SSD drive as per normal and then proceed with the installation? (will I need to use cgdisk instead of cfdisk?)
Thanks!
edit: sorry I didn't see there was a separate installation sub-forum.