If you choose to install puppy to your hard drive, you may need to monkey about with the partitions. This page caters for people that either have a computer with no operating system or just one install of some flavour of windows. If you've got linux or multiple windows installations then you probably know all this stuff already. this information is current as of puppy 2.14, but I can't really see it going out of date. if you just want a simple checklist see HDDInstallChecklist
In order for you to install an operating system onto a hard disk drive (HDD) the disk must have at least one formatted partition. Creating a partition is a two stage process.
Partitioning -This writes some information at the start of the disk that explains where data may be found on the disk. Its a bit like creating a table of contents for a book.
Formatting - This creates a structure inside a partition that shows how the data will be organised. Its a bit like ruling lines on a piece of paper before writing on it.
At the absolute bare minimum, you will need one partition.
If your disk is partitioned and formatted already you might just use what is there. However, if this is NTFS you are likely to encounter problems at some stage, especially as you have no windows installation to fix errors on the disk with. FAT type partitions will work, though general advice for a linux only installation would be to use a linux type partition such as ext2 (type 83).
Guides on the web for general linux multi-user partitioning schemes often suggest complicated partitioning schemes with different partitions for different parts of the linux installation. This is overkill for puppy. I would recommend separate partitions for your puppy installation and your data this makes upgrading more straight forward and protects your data slightly from a broken operating system. You will probably also want a swap partition, unless you have RAM coming out of your ears. My suggested partitioning scheme is:
partition 1 linux type 83, ext2 up to 2GB if you have it, at a bare minimum a frugal install will fit in less than 200MB
partition 2 linux type 83, ext2 as much space as you can allocate
partition 3 type swap, type 82 up to 2 times the size of your RAM
Partition managers are available at Menu - System -Gparted or Pdisk
Gparted has a nice graphical interface, does formatting automatically and can resize partitions.
The tools available using Pdisk still work well on very low powered machines after using them you still have to format the partitions you they have created.
Be careful using these commands will destroy any data on the partitions.
To format the first partition on your first HDD as type ext2, open a console window and enter.
mke2fs /dev/hda1
To format the second partition on your first HDD as type ext2, open a console window and enter.
mke2fs /dev/hda2
To format the third partition on your first HDD as type swap, open a console window and enter.
mkswap -c /dev/hda3
You will also need to make the swap active by typing
swapon /dev/hda3
