First and foremost, before beginning the installation process, MAKE
SURE YOU HAVE A RELIABLE BACKUP of any data on your hard disk that you
wish to keep.  Repartitioning your hard disk is an excellent way to
destroy important data.

The OpenBSD root partition must reside completely within the BIOS
supported part of the hard disk -- this could typically be 504MB, 2GB,
8GB or 128GB, depending upon the age of the machine and its BIOS. The
rest of the OpenBSD partitions can be anywhere that hardware supports.

If you plan to dual boot, use the other operating system's "fdisk" program
or partition editor to create at least one of the partitions to be used for
that operating system.  If that operating system is already set up to use the
entire disk, you will need to make space available.  Windows can resize its
own system partition.  In the control panel, search for "partition": this
will lead you to the system administration tool.  You do not have to create an
OpenBSD partition at this time; the OpenBSD installation will give you an
opportunity to create the partition needed for OpenBSD.


Your hard disk is now prepared to have OpenBSD installed on it, and
you should proceed with the installation instructions.