Translations by Mitsuya Shibata

Ubuntu Documentation Project

Canonical Ltd. and members of the <placeholder-1/>

Ubuntu normally configures your hardware automatically, but there may be occasions when you need to make changes to hardware settings yourself. This section provides information on tools which can be used to configure your hardware.

Advanced disk-usage analysis

For a more accurate analysis of your filesystem, press <menuchoice><guimenu>Applications</guimenu><guimenuitem>Accessories</guimenuitem><guimenuitem>Disk Usage Analyzer</guimenuitem></menuchoice> to start the <application>Disk Usage Analyzer</application>.

Press <guibutton>Scan Home</guibutton> to scan your home directory, or press <guibutton>Scan Filesystem</guibutton> to scan the whole filesystem.

See the <ulink url="ghelp:baobab" type="help">Disk Usage Analyzer Manual</ulink> for more information.

Empty your trash by right-clicking the Trash icon on the bottom panel and selecting <guilabel>Empty the Trash folder</guilabel>.

Delete files that you no longer need. You can use the Disk Usage Analyzer (<menuchoice><guimenu>Applications</guimenu><guimenuitem>Accessories</guimenuitem><guimenuitem>Disk Usage Analyzer</guimenuitem></menuchoice>) to find which files are taking up the most space. Be careful not to delete files that you still need!

You can also compress and archive your old, rarely-used documents:

Select the files and folders that you want to compress, right-click one of them and select <guilabel>Create Archive</guilabel>.

Choose a name, location and format for the file (the <filename>.tar.gz</filename> format is the most commonly used on Ubuntu, <filename>.zip</filename> is compatible with Windows and <filename>.tar.lzma</filename> usually offers the best compression).

Click <guibutton>Create</guibutton>. An archive file will be created containing compressed copies of your files.

Delete the old uncompressed files to free some disk space.

Partitioning a device

Be careful when altering disk partitions, as it is possible to lose your data if you delete or change the wrong partition.

Freeing space for a new partition

A list of partitions will appear. Select the desired partition and choose <menuchoice><guimenu>Partition</guimenu><guimenuitem>Unmount</guimenuitem></menuchoice>.

To resize the partition choose <guilabel>Resize/Move</guilabel>. The dialog <guilabel>Resize/Move</guilabel> will be shown. You can use the <guilabel>Free Space Following (MiB)</guilabel> box to choose how much space to free after this partition, or <guilabel>Free Space Preceding (MiB)</guilabel> to free space before this partition. Alternatively you can use the slider to adjust the partition size.

To create a new partition inside an already partitioned device, you must first resize an existing partition. If you already have free space, skip to <xref linkend="creating-new-partition"/>; otherwise, follow the instructions below: <placeholder-1/>

Creating a new partition

Formatting a partition

You can use <application>GNOME Partition Editor</application> to format disk partitions (see <xref linkend="partitioning-device"/> for more information on <application>GNOME Partition Editor</application>).

What is formatting?

To format a hard disk, device or partition means to prepare that particular device to be used for storing data.

The operation of formatting a hard disk or partition is when a specific data-storage format is applied to that device; this format is the <quote>filesystem</quote>.

When you buy a disk it is usually not formatted, and cannot yet be used for storing data. When you format the device, you will notice that the free space on it is less than the original size. This is due to the fact that some space has to be used to make the device usable; this space is occupied by the filesystem. Also, disk manufacturers often use a different standard to measure disk capacity, which results in a further discrepancy.

What is a filesystem?

<acronym>FAT16</acronym> and <acronym>FAT32</acronym>: these are Microsoft Windows filesystems found on older computers. If you would like to share data between two computers, the <emphasis><acronym>FAT32</acronym></emphasis> format is a good choice.

<acronym>NTFS</acronym>: this is the filesystem type used by more modern versions of Microsoft Windows.

<acronym>HFS+</acronym>: this is the Mac OS X default filesystem type.

A partition is a means of dividing the storage capacity of a device, such as a hard disk, into several parts which can then be treated as separate storage devices (<quote>logical devices</quote>).

To retrieve free space

To install different operating systems

To better organize data on the hard disk

When you connect a removable storage device to your computer, it must be <emphasis>mounted</emphasis> by the operating system so that you are able to access the files on the device.

To find out how to mount and unmount storage devices, see <ulink type="help" url="ghelp:user-guide#gosnautilus-460">Using Removable Media</ulink>

When you copy files to a storage device, they are not always written to the device immediately. Instead, they are often stored in a queue so that they can all be transferred across to the device at the same time (for reasons of efficiency). If you disconnect the device before all of the files have been transferred, then you could lose the files. To prevent this, you must always <emphasis>unmount</emphasis> a storage device before disconnecting it.

Most laptop computers come with a touchpad, which is used to control the mouse pointer. There are many ways of changing the way that the touchpad behaves; the most basic touchpad settings can be configured in the following way.

Press <menuchoice><guimenu>System</guimenu><guimenuitem>Preferences</guimenuitem><guimenuitem>Mouse</guimenuitem></menuchoice>.

Select the <guilabel>Touchpad</guilabel> tab.

Here you can change the touchpad settings to your liking. Changes should take effect immediately.

Some touchpads may be detected as normal mouse devices, even though they are actually touchpads. In this case, the <guilabel>Touchpad</guilabel> tab will not be available in the mouse preferences.

In order to save power, you can put your computer into one of a number of power-saving modes when you are not using it:

<emphasis role="strong">Suspending</emphasis> a computer is like putting the computer to sleep. The computer will still be turned on and all of your work will be left open, but it will use much less power. You can wake the computer by pressing a key or clicking the mouse.

<emphasis role="strong">Hibernating</emphasis> is turning the computer off completely while saving the current state of the computer (such as keeping all of your open documents). When you turn the computer back on after hibernating, all of your work should be restored as it was before hibernation. No power is used when the computer is hibernating.

<emphasis role="strong">Shutting down</emphasis> is turning the computer off completely, without saving the current state of the computer. No power is used when the computer is shut down.

<emphasis role="strong">Resuming</emphasis> is bringing the computer out of a power saving mode and back into normal operation. You can resume the computer from being suspended by pressing a keyboard button or by clicking the mouse. You can resume from being hibernated by pressing the power button on your computer.

You can manually put your computer into a power-saving mode by pressing the <application>User Switcher</application> in the top right hand corner of the screen and then pressing the appropriate button.

Some computers may have problems going into certain power saving modes. The best way of checking if your computer can handle a power-saving mode is to try to switch to that mode and see if it behaves as you expected. Always make sure you save important documents before suspending or hibernating.