Translations by Walter Cheuk

Working with Hardware Devices

2006-09-07

This document is maintained by the Ubuntu documentation team (https://wiki.ubuntu.com/DocumentationTeam). For a list of contributors, see the <ulink url="../../libs/C/contributors.xml">contributors page</ulink>

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

Your computer consists of a number of connected devices, which are collectively known as computer <emphasis>hardware</emphasis>.

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.

This section provides instructions on how to handle disks and drives, such as removable hard disks.

partitioning

Alternatively, click <menuchoice><guimenu>Places</guimenu><guimenuitem>Computer</guimenuitem></menuchoice>, right-click a hard disk, click <guilabel>Properties</guilabel> and select the <guilabel>Basic</guilabel> tab to see a summary of the disk space currently available on that disk.

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.

How can I free-up some disk space?

There are several simple ways of making more disk space available:

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

To apply the changes, click <guibutton>Resize/Move</guibutton>.

Creating a new partition

A list of partitions will appear. Select the one called <guilabel>unallocated</guilabel> and click <guibutton>New</guibutton>.

From the <guilabel>Filesystem</guilabel> drop-down list choose the desired type of filesystem to use and click <guibutton>Add</guibutton>.

To apply all the changes made, click <guibutton>Apply</guibutton>.

To format a partition, do as follows: <placeholder-1/>

Pressing <guibutton>Apply</guibutton> will cause all of the files on the partition to be permanently deleted.

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.

What is a Partition?

Each logical device is seen by the operating system as a distinct device, and thus is treated as an independent disk.

To install different operating systems

To better organize data on the hard disk

Partitioning a hard disk can be done for several reasons: <placeholder-1/>

Mounting and Unmounting Devices

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.

This section contains information for people using Ubuntu on a laptop computer.

You may wish to change the power management settings of your laptop in order to help extend its battery life and reduce energy wastage.

Press <menuchoice><guimenu>System</guimenu><guimenuitem>Preferences</guimenuitem><guimenuitem>Power Management</guimenuitem></menuchoice>.

Change the settings as appropriate. Changes are applied instantly.

Displaying a screensaver may use more power than simply letting the screen go blank. Turning off the screensaver could slightly improve the battery life of your laptop.

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

Change the <guilabel>Screensaver theme</guilabel> to <guilabel>Blank screen</guilabel>. This will simply display a blank screen as a screensaver.

When your laptop is running on battery, one of the biggest drains on power is the display. Turning the brightness of the display down could improve battery life significantly; many laptops allow you to do this by pressing <keycombo><keycap>Fn</keycap><keycap>F7</keycap></keycombo> several times.

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>.