Hi !
>On Tue, 25 May 1999, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
>> I am quite confuse with the PC hard disk partition.
>
>It's quite confusing until you figure out what it's doing. I'm still
>not understanding how dos/win names partitions :-)
It is not if you know, hehe.
The following nomenclature is used by any OS (faik)
primary partitions are numbered 1 to 4 and these numberes are reserved even
if there is only one primary partition existing. Any other partition is
then numbered from 5 on. So with one primnary and 3 logical drives in an
extended partition it is named like this using the Linux naming:
hda1 - primary partition
hda5 - drive 1 in extended partition
hda6 - drive 2 in extended partition
hda7 - drive 3 in extended partition
>> 1. PC HD can have only 4 primary partiton, but unlimited extended
>> partition?
>
>There may only be four partitions on an IDE drive. These are the
>primary partitions. To get around the four partition limit, you can
>make one of the primary partitions into an extended partition.
No ! Four primary partitions are the maximum. One can create numerous
partitions in an extended partition but a primary partition is a bootable
partition, one can't boot from an extended partition. Extended partitions
consist logical drives, nothing else.
>Within this extended partition you create logical partitions. To the
>BIOS (and early versions of DOS) these logical partitions do not exist,
>they're just one big primary partition.
right, the one big partition is the extended partition. The logical drives
are just logical as the name says. To be strict about the names it is that
there are no logical partitions but only logical drives, but however it is
called, one will know what it means anyways.
>
>So if you have 2 primary partitions, 1 extended partition, and 3
>logical partitions, the BIOS sees only 3 partitions, but Linux or
>Windows sees 5 partitions. The extended partition is not seen since it
>is only there to hold the logical partitions.
See above, if one takes a look at the Linux bootup messages there all
partitions are shown.
>
>> 2. In Dos/Windows fdisk, I am able to create Primary and extended
>> partition, but the extended partition show in Dos/Windows fdisk is same
>> with the linux extended partition?
>
>It should be the same partition. Write down the sector start and end
>assigned to it in DOS fdisk, and check that they're the same in Linux
>fdisk.
It should not be the same, but i have to think about that and check it
back again. :/
>
>> 3. If I already use up two partition for my Windows system, am I able
>> to create another three partition(1 for linux system, 1 for user data, 1
>> for swap) for linux since PC HD support only 4 primary partition.
>
>Yes, but two of them need to be logical partitions:
> hda1 <primary> - windows C:
> hda2 <primary> - windows D:
> hda3 <primary> - linux /
> hda4 <extended> - not seen by anything but fdisk
> hda5 <logical> - linux /usr
> hda6 <logical> - linux swap
Wrong. First of all i have no clue how one can create with the DOS fdisk
two primary partitions on one harddrive unit. Maybe you have a different
version, but my fdisk replies with a message like "there is already a
primary DOS partition". I didn't check this possibility under Linux, maybe
there it is possible.
>
>> 4. max size for linux swap partition is 16, and max no of linux swap
>> partiton is 8. Kernal 2.0 and 2.2 still having this limit?
>
>I'm not sure what the 2.2 limit is, but 2.0 has a limit of 128Megs.
Yeps, 128 MB.
Greez
Dave
