Locate your new hard disk in the main page of the Partitions on Local Disks module. It will probably not have any partitions on it, but it may have been set up with one large partition by the manufacturer.

Assuming no partitions exist yet, click the Add primary partition link next to your new hard disk. This will take you to the creation form shown in Figure 8.2 for entering the details of the new partition.

If the new partition takes up the entire hard disk, the Extent fields can be left unchanged as they are always automatically filled in to cover all the free space left on the disk. If you want to create more than one partition, however, adjust the extent so that it takes up only part of the disk.

If this partition is for an ext2, ext3, reiserfs, or xfs filesystem, set the Type field to Linux.

If it is to be for virtual memory, set the Type to Linux swap.

If it is for software RAID, set the Type to Linux raid.

If it is for LVM, set the Type to Linux LVM.

If you are creating the filesystem for some other operating system to use, set the Type field to whatever is appropriate for that OS.

Click the Create button to add the partition. Assuming no errors were detected, you will be returned to the list of disks and partitions on the main page of the module, which should now include the new partition.

If the new partition is to have a Linux filesystem created on it, you must follow the steps in Section 8.4 “Creating a New Filesystem”. Virtual memory partitions can be added immediately in the Disk and Network Filesystems module. Partitions for use with RAID can be also be used immediately in the Linux RAID module but you must have created all the partitions that will make up a RAID device before creating it. Partitions that will be part of an LVM volume group can be added immediately using the Logical Volume Management module.