Installation guide
point. Double-click on the partition or click the Edit button.
• Type: This field shows the partition's file system type (for example, ext2, ext3, or vfat).
• Format: This field shows if the partition being created will be formatted.
• Size (MB): This field shows the partition's size (in MB).
• Start: This field shows the cylinder on your hard drive where the partition begins.
• End: This field shows the cylinder on your hard drive where the partition ends.
Hide RAID device/LVM Volume Group members: Select this option if you do not want to view
any RAID device or LVM Volume Group members that have been created.
14.4. Recommended Partitioning Scheme
Unless you have a reason for doing otherwise, we recommend that you create the following par-
titions:
• A swap partition (at least 256 MB) — swap partitions are used to support virtual memory. In
other words, data is written to a swap partition when there is not enough RAM to store the
data your system is processing.
If you are unsure about what size swap partition to create, make it twice the amount of RAM
on your machine. It must be of type swap.
Creation of the proper amount of swap space varies depending on a number of factors in-
cluding the following (in descending order of importance):
• The applications running on the machine.
• The amount of physical RAM installed on the machine.
• The version of the OS.
Swap should equal 2x physical RAM for up to 2 GB of physical RAM, and then an additional
1x physical RAM for any amount above 2 GB, but never less than 32 MB.
So, if:
M = Amount of RAM in GB, and S = Amount of swap in GB, then
If M < 2
S = M *2
Else
S = M + 2
Using this formula, a system with 2 GB of physical RAM would have 4 GB of swap, while
one with 3 GB of physical RAM would have 5 GB of swap. Creating a large swap space par-
tition can be especially helpful if you plan to upgrade your RAM at a later time.
For systems with really large amounts of RAM (more than 32 GB) you can likely get away
with a smaller swap partition (around 1x, or less, of physical RAM).
14.4. Recommended Partitioning Scheme
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