Step 4 - Do You Have Enough Disk Space?
Nearly every modern-day operating system uses disk partitions, and Red Hat Linux is no exception. When installing Red Hat Linux, it may be necessary to work with disk partitions. If you have not worked with disk partitions before (or would like a quick review of the basic concepts) please read An Introduction to Disk Partitions in the appendix of the Official Red Hat Linux Reference Guide on the Documentation CD before proceeding.
If Red Hat Linux will share your system with another OS, you will need to make sure you have enough available disk space on your hard drive(s) for this installation.
This disk space must be separate from the disk space used by other OSes you may have installed on your system, such as Windows, OS/2, or even a different version of Linux. This is done by dedicating one or more partitions to Red Hat Linux.
Before you start the installation process, one of the following conditions must be met:
Your computer must have enough unpartitioned disk space.
You must have one or more partitions that may be deleted, thereby freeing up enough disk space to install Red Hat Linux.
You must have a preexisting, formatted FAT (DOS) partition with sufficient disk space, and install using the partitionless installation method (Appendix B).
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To perform a partitionless installation, you also must choose the class of installation you want to perform. However, unlike a typical installation, you will not have to worry about losing any information on your system. A partitionless installation will not remove existing partitions. For more information, turn to Appendix B. |
A workstation-class installation requires at least 900MB of free space. This installation size requirement is the same for partitionless installations.
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To use the automatic partitioning feature of Red Hat Linux you must have enough free disk space available (900MB or more), otherwise this option will not appear during your installation. |
If you are not sure that you meet these conditions or want to know how to free up more space for your Red Hat Linux installation, please refer to the partitioning appendix in the Official Red Hat Linux Reference Guide on the Documentation CD.