[Leaplist] Partitioning Gurus?

[Chris]

Chris wrote:

> Fred Moore wrote:
>
>> On Saturday 10 February 2007 12:05, Chris wrote:
>>  
>>
>>> pberry2 at cfl.rr.com wrote:
>>>   
>>>
>>>> Chris wrote:
>>>>     
>>>>
>>>>> Urrgh - I talked a friend into installing Linux, for which he
>>>>> volunteered his new Dell laptop, as long as he could dual-boot.
>>>>> So I fired up GPartEd, all ready to slice and dice, and saw this:
>>>>>
>>>>> /dev/sda1   fat16   47.03 MiB
>>>>> /dev/sda2   ntfs    104.99 GiB
>>>>> unallocated            7.84 MiB
>>>>> /dev/sda3   extended   2.00 GiB
>>>>>  /dev/sda5  fat32   2.00 GiB
>>>>> /dev/sda4   fat 32   4.74 GiB       Apparently, Dell hase all kinds
>>>>> of really wonderful stuff that
>>>>> just has to chew up the available partitions. Thank you, Dell.
>>>>> I don't know what these are there for - I suspect the fat16
>>>>> is for some Dell Diag utility - and one of the fat32s is
>>>>> probably for Ghost? - No clue.
>>>>>
>>>>> Any suggestions that won't kill his existing functionality?
>>>>> While I'm in there, I'd like to sneak in a fat32 partition for
>>>>> files he'll use in both systems.
>>>>>
>>>>> Cheers,
>>>>>
>>>>> Chris
>>>>> _____________
>>>>>       
>>>>
>>>> Chris:
>>>>
>>>> You are confused.  sda1/  plus sda2/ plus sda4/ are primary
>>>> partitions.  then,  they made extended sda3/ (logical)  2.0Gb and put
>>>> sda5/ (logical) there.
>>>>     
>>>
>>> Yes, I am very confused. I thought SDA3 was an extended partition,
>>> but you show it as (logical). My understanding was that you were
>>> allowed four primary partitions, because there are only four
>>> partition entries in the MBR - and up to three of those partitions
>>> can be Extended partitions, which can contain multiple logical
>>> partitions.
>>> http://www.minix3.org/doc/partitions.html
>>>
>>>   
>>>
>>>> When you resize sda2/ down to like 40Gb,  you will get an extended
>>>> partition sda6/ through sda?? out of it for as many as you like, up to
>>>> the 64Gb that is made, in this example, to be free for use.  The 7.84
>>>> Gb unallocated space could be made into a FAT32 extended logical
>>>> partition for file transfers!
>>>>     
>>>
>>> OK, I'll give it a shot, but it looks like Dell has used all four
>>> partition entries in the MBR, so I'm not sure where there's
>>> room for any more extended partitions??? Did you meant that
>>> I would be able to create more logical partitions in the SDA3
>>> extended partition?
>>>
>>>   
>>>
>>>> I thought Dell did better work than all that so I think this has been
>>>> fiddled with since it was built.
>>>>     
>>>
>>> Not too fiddled with - it's brand new. I tried this Monday last week,
>>> then decided to hold off when I found all the partitions - Wednesday
>>> last week, his HD died. Dell, to their credit had it replaced with
>>> a pre-imaged drive for his laptop within three days. And the pre-imaged
>>> drive is exactly the same.
>>>
>>> Dell has apparently gotten "cute" lately:
>>> http://www.goodells.net/dellrestore/mediadirect.htm
>>> I'm still trying to sort through this page, but it looks
>>> similar to my friend's layout.
>>>
>>> Cheers,
>>>
>>> Chris
>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> Leaplist mailing list
>>> Leaplist at leap-cf.org
>>> http://lists.leap-cf.org/mailman/listinfo/leaplist
>>>   
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> and here I thought it as:
>> sda, sdb, sdc, sdd were drives (scsi)
>>
>>  
>>
> I believe this is true - each representing a physical device in
> the /dev tree. Of course, I also believe it is true that all of our
> world leaders have been secretly replaced by alien reptiles,
> so who knows.
>
>> while sda1, sda2, sda3, etc.. up to 16
>> were logical partitions on each drive..
>>  
>>
> I am thinking that sda1-4 are primary partitions and that
> sda5-n (don't know how many is possible) are the logical
> partitions. As far as I understand, up to three primary
> partitions may be "extended" partitions, acting as containers
> for multiple "logical" partitions.
>
> Of course, just to kink things up the goodells link above seems to
> indicate that there is now the possibility of magic "hidden" partitions
> that can be swapped in and out of the MBR as needed - yikes!!!
>
>> and I always understood that 4 primary partitions could exist.. each 
>> of the 4 could be extended partitions allowing each to have 16 
>> logical partitions..
>>  
>>
> I think that only three of the primary partitions can be extended.
> But I have absolutely zero idea as to how many logical partitions
> can exist in each extended partition - or if there is an absolute
> upper number of logical partitions for the drive.
>


Actually, now I'm even more confused - it looks like only one
primary partition may be extended - although from there
on it gets weird, apparently extended partitions actually
"point" to other extended partitions...
http://tldp.org/HOWTO/Large-Disk-HOWTO-13.html




>> guess I missed something, but this has always worked for me... Fred
>>
>>  
>>
> Don't break it if'n it ain't fixed... errr, something like that.
>
> Cheers,
>
> Chris
>
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