Handbook Talk:AMD64/Blocks/Disks

Missing Key template
Consider the following sentence: "This allows users to abort the operation if a mistake was made - in that case, type immediately and hit enter and the partition will not be deleted."

It should be fixed as follows: "This allows users to abort the operation if a mistake was made - in that case, type immediately and hit  and the partition will not be deleted."

Fturco (talk) 18:31, 13 May 2017 (UTC)

Actually there's another similar instance later on that also needs to be fixed: "When prompted for the first sector, make sure it starts from 2048 (which is needed for the boot loader) and hit enter."

Fturco (talk) 18:34, 13 May 2017 (UTC)


 * Fixed both! --Maffblaster (talk) 18:19, 15 May 2017 (UTC)

Minor problems

 * 1) We should add a colon to the following sentence (between "process types" and "legacy"): "these are somewhat loosely tied to the two boot process types legacy (BIOS) boot and UEFI."
 * 2) We should add a comma to the following sentence (between "manufacturers" and "partition tables"): "Although still supported by most motherboard manufacturers partition tables are considered legacy."
 * 3) I would replace "greater than 2 TiBs in size" with "bigger than 2 TiB" in the following sentence: "DOS partitioning tables cannot handle disks that are greater than 2 TiBs in size."
 * 4) The following sentence contains two minor problems: "DOS disklables supports a maximum of four partitions." I would replace that with "DOS disklabels support a maximum of four partitions."
 * 5) In the following sentence we should replace "zettabytes" with "zebibytes": "almost 8 ZiB - yes, zettabytes"
 * 6) In the following sentence I would replace "in a few commands" with "with a few commands": "new devices can be added and old devices removed in a few commands"
 * 7) I would add a comma to the following sentence (between "supported" and "LVM"): "although fully supported LVM is outside the scope of this guide"
 * 8) The following external link supports HTTPS: http://www.uefi.org/sites/default/files/resources/UEFI%202_5.pdf

-- Fturco (talk) 14:50, 3 June 2020 (UTC)


 * Suggestions implemented. Thank you for the excellent work! --Maffblaster (talk) 04:14, 29 October 2020 (UTC)

Mark for translation
Please mark the whole article for translation, thanks

Quilosaq (talk) 09:03, 19 June 2021 (UTC)


 * Done. Thanks! --Maffblaster (talk) 01:16, 15 July 2021 (UTC)


 * Sorry, I didn't explain myself well. The translate tag is just before Partitioning the disk with MBR for BIOS / legacy boot and should be at the end of the article.
 * --Quilosaq (talk) 20:51, 25 July 2021 (UTC)
 * Fixed by Maffblaster
 * --Quilosaq (talk) 00:12, 28 July 2021 (UTC)

Change recommended ESP size
An ESP size of 512 MiB should be recommended as already done by the Debian project for the Debian installer with reference to launchpad bug 1306164.

David Sardari (talk) 20:15, 5 February 2022 (UTC)


 * I have never seen or heard of (second hand) an issue with formatting the ESP 256 MiB... The links which you posted are not compelling. Almost seems like the issue is related to 4K sector sizes, instead of the size of the partition itself. A 512 MiB ESP seems too big to be recommending as a standard installation size... just because Debian made a change, does not mean Gentoo should as well. =) For now - we will not be making this suggested change unless we see bug reports (on our own Bugzilla) that indicate certain systems cannot boot without a larger ESP. Thanks! --Maffblaster (talk) 08:48, 22 February 2022 (UTC)


 * Yes, 512 MiB was suggested to cover all use cases, including the use of disks with 4K sector size. I am in favor of 512 MiB as 256 MiB more or less these days doesn't seem a big issue to me (IMHO). --Duxsco (talk) 21:33, 23 February 2022 (UTC)

Use cfdisk instead of fdisk
The menu-driven cfdisk is much more intuitive to use than fdisk and the Gentoo minimal install CD comes with it. Updating the Handbook to use cfdisk would make the Gentoo installation process that much less intimidating to users.

DraconicPenguin (talk) 15:56, 1 October 2022 (UTC)