I installed a new hard drive. Now what do I do?
 

I put a new hard drive in a Dell Optiplex GX520 desktop computer. I want to put only Xubuntu 16.04LTS on it.

So what do I have to do to achieve that?

I know how to live boot the OS from a USB drive or I may try a DVD-R.

Is the first step the live booting?

Then get Gparted and format the drive?

Is it best to format the drive with NTFS? (Just so there is Windows/Xubuntu compatibility if that ever comes up.)

All I can do with the computer at this point is turn it on. Will I be able to get to the BIOS? Is there even a BIOS on an empty hard drive?

I looked at the documentation for installing a new hard drive in Ubuntu but that made it seem like a OS was already on the hard drive. (They're like 'Open a terminal...')

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/In...gANewHardDrive

Thanks.

If your not going to install windows anytime soon then boot the usb and at the partitioning part of the installation, select use whole disk and the installation will take care of the rest. If you plan on installing windows at some point it is better to install windows first, less headaches

Generally you install windows first then linux for the most easy way around but not 100% necessary.

The most simple answer is boot to linux and follow installer.

You could simply install linux to the entire drive and at some point make room or leave some room. Older systems may have an issue where loaders are. They may not like the loader too high on the drive. You can leave room for windows in front or back of drive.

Linux can usually be moved with a live cd/usb/dvd. Windows sometimes complains.

The only real reason to make a live usb is for speed of install. If you system is oldish you may be worse off. If you know it will boot to usb then consider it. I tend to have a bunch of RW type media to use. (again can cause issues on older readers)

I suggest that you go directly to bios and see that the hard drive reads as what you put in. That your boot order is as you wish. A usb boot may need to have usb above internal hard drive in the hard drive order. It would not be a usb choice usually.

GParted is usually on the installation medium for the major Ubuntu distributions so you likely won't need to get it separately.

Formatting the drive/partitions ntfs will only be useful if you want windows data. A Linux distribution will not function on an ntfs filesystem.

The BIOS is not on any hard drive but on the system board.

most installers I've used for various Linux Distros I've always been able to go into manual mode and chop up the hdd from within the install process. Just need to know which dev/sdxx you're working with if you have more than one hdd hooked up.

Thanks color. Wow. That makes it sound pretty easy. And yeah, I don't want any Windows on it.

Thanks jefro. Yeah, not going with Windows at all, but I do remember having a hassle with this computer before not booting to a usb flash drive. But it has a DVD tray so I'll go into the BIOS and make sure the boot order is to DVD first and then burn the iso to a DVD. Hopefully that should work. Thanks much.

Thanks yancek.

I don't plan on having any Windows data on the hard drive at all. So what do you suggest I format the hard drive to? Actually, I thought NTFS was the format that worked best with Linux and Windows. But if that won't work, I've read that ext3 is the safest choice. (My computer is 10+ years old. I heard ext4 was for newer computers.)

Thanks. I did not know that.

Thanks BW-userx. No, I'm only using one hard drive. Keeping it simple. :)

Hey, am I going to run into a situation when I format the hard drive that it asks me to set aside a certain amount for swap? And if I do run into that is there a certain % that is suggested? Thanks.

depends on what you do with your system I think, I use to give myself 1GB but noticed with the distro I am using now it does not even use it, rarely do I cee my sysem even using it, so I cut it down to 500MB just incase and my fall back plan is just make a swap file and turn it on if I need to.

specs say twice as much ram you have which defeats the reason for RAM. IMO

usally 1GB should do if you need more

that creates a 500MB size swap file. you can make as many as you need or as big as you need.

If I remember right, 1.5 times your ram. The minimum would be egual to your ram and the max would be 2 times your ram

Thanks BW-userx. I'm going to have to explore this a bit. My new hard drive is 320 GB and I'll probably never use 100GB of it, so I could easily make the swap as big as would work, but I've read you can have too much swap. Is that true?

I like the idea that 1GB is sufficient, but is more swap optimal?

Thanks color. I've read the 2X is for really old machines. My machine is 10+ years old and it's got 2GB RAM but if all goes well I'm planning on upping that to 4GB RAM. With 1.5 rate that would be 6GB swap, and with 2.0 it would be 8GB.

I have a ton of space on this hard drive (I could have 100GB of swap) but is that optimal? I've read you can have too much swap. Is that true?

But a lot of people say 1GB of swap is plenty.

not really if you do no use it then it is just space going to waste . is it not?

that is why I cut mine down to 500MB with a 320 that is rather small if you do lots of movies and music like I do. I am running external HDD's now and have a 250GB 7200 sata II for my secondary hdd on my LT, 750GB 7200 hybrid sata III on my main HDD.

I use to use a 1tb for my main HDD, and I still filled them up while using 1gb swap, I cut it down due to me noticing that I've never used 1gb of swap with 4GB RAM.

now I am running 16GB RAM (due to blender needing and loving RAM usage, and DDR3 RAM is rather inexpensive on eBay at least ) if you're using up all of your RAM for sys to have to use SWAP all of the time, get more RAM.

I never believed in that 1.5 the size of Swap to RAM ratio crap that to me is illogical if I had 32GB of ram I'd be using up my HDD for make up swap which in my mind defeats the purpose for RAM. I am sure there are apps out thier like blender that can and will use up RAM but for the advarage user does RAM really get used up , and swap needed to make up for lack of RAM?


quick fit - create a swap file and use it when needed. swap files have no limit to how many you use.

if I where you, no matter what size HDD I have I'd still use just 1GB to 500MB swap and just keep an eye on it as take note of your behaviors and how they cause your sys to use your swap. then you can adjust accordingly, if you get into Linux you'll learn which files are the most importaint to you and back them up. so if you cannot resize your HDD or do not want to, then just re-install and make the adjustments replace the files with your backed up ones to save time having to modify them again to get your sys back to how you had it before re-installing.

my distro I can re-install it in 5 minutes maybe 7 minutes all I have to do then is install my apps again. nbd to me.

I do not scare away from having to do an re-install of an entire system, I too split my sys that cuts down on a lot of losing my home dir files and custom conf files

/ root at front of hdd because that is the fastest part of the platter, swap in the middle, it is second fastest part of platter, /home last because it does not need as much speed to read and write to start apps and get info off swap.