Partitioning on new install - leave to Ubuntu installer OR use Gparted
 

Hi
Troubleshoting various issues on a new Ubuntu install and want to confirm my original partitioning is correct,
I let the actual Ubunto ISO installer do the partitioning but after reading this

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/UEFI

wonder if I should have pre - formatted using GParted instead.

In particular the article mentions the importance of have a FAT32 formatted EFI System Partition.(Boot)
Not sure if the native Ubuntu installer does this for you....

There should be an option in the installer to create UEFI boot partitions and the like though they have to be created manually and it is not necessarily obvious how to do so.

It depends if this is a new computer with nothing on the drives or if it is a PC with Windows or had Windows.

If there is/was a Windows 8 or above, the UEFI partition probably already exist.
Windows 7 can also be configured with GPT but most vendors selling Windows 7 did not include a mother board with these capabilities.

Also, most if not all computers with Windows 8 or higher allows the option to set either UEFI or legacy boot. This can be set in settings/bios before the operating system boots. Legacy boot allows you to use legacy partitioning scheme, UEFI uses GPT partition scheme.

Although I'm not familiar with Ubuntu, the installer would likely partition the drive as per the bios configurations.

First check whether your motherboard supports uefi:

when I did use Ubuntu and tried them that, with their same install gui, I always pick the "do something else" so I can have full control over how my HDD is partitioned out. Even when I used windows I'd do the same, using their option within their install process to partition out my Hdd the way I want it and not what they want.

The installer has a way to make custom installs but you can check all of that now if you have gparted installed.

You can actually load gparted on a live cd if you have a bit of ram. Then you could perform the install and gparted if the distro doesn't come with gparted native.

Thanks. Yes used gparted on a boot USB. Seems to give finer control over setting up your partitions.