How many partitions can I create?

[dirk_diggler]

How many partitions can I create?

Hi all. I am a complete newb to this, so please bear with me. I recently got a 1 TB hard drive for data storage, but can use some of it for playing with Linux. I plan on using 800 GB (2x400 GB) for data storage, and the rest for Linux. I was thinking of playing with three different flavors: Ubuntu, Fedora, and OpenSUSE. I plan on partitioning the drive with PartedMagic (GParted). I am planning on having separate /root and /home partitions (as suggested by many on this forum from previous posts), so that means I will be using 2 ext3 partitions per OS, and a shared swap partition.

So, my plan is as follows:

1 extended - broken up to 6 logical partitions (ext3) and 1 swap partition
2 primary NTFS partitions

Here's where I foresee running into problems. How many partitions can I create on a single drive? Will I be limited to 9? Doing this gave me the following partition designations from PartedMagic:

/dev/sda1 extended
/dev/sda5 ext3 (will be used for ubuntu /root)
/dev/sda6 ext3 (will be used for ubuntu /home)
/dev/sda7 linux-swap
/dev/sda8 ext3 (...for fedora /root)
/dev/sda9 ext3 (...for fedora /home)
/dev/sda11 ext3 (...for opensuse /root)
/dev/sda10 ext3 (...for opensuse /home)
/dev/sda2 ntfs
/dev/sda3 ntfs
unallocated unallocated

What happened to sda4? And what wil the last two logical partitions be called? Will I have issues mounting sda10 and sda11 for installation and mounting? Is the sda4 reserved for the unallocated partition?

This second drive will be used in conjuction with XP ("multi" boot) on a separate HD, which is already installed.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

[devils casper]

Hi and Welcome !!

You can create 4 Primary Partitions
Or
3 Primary and 1 Extended Partition + 64 Logical Partitions in Extended Partition in Single Hard Disk.

In your Hard Disk ..

/dev/sda1 Extended
/dev/sda2 Primary
/dev/sda3 Primary
/dev/sda4 <You havn't created third Primary Partition yet and its reserved for that.>
/dev/sda5, 6, 7....... Logical partitions inside Extended.

You wont have any problem in mounting any partition.

To make things a bit simpler, I would suggest you to create partition structure like this

/dev/sda1, 2 and 3 Primary Partitions.
/dev/sda4 Extended Partition.
/dev/sda5, 6, 7, .... Logical Partitions.

Logical Partitions always start from /dev/sda5.

[dirk_diggler]

Hi and Welcome !!

You can create 4 Primary Partitions
Or
3 Primary and 1 Extended Partition + 64 Logical Partitions in Extended Partition in Single Hard Disk.

In your Hard Disk ..

/dev/sda1 Extended
/dev/sda2 Primary
/dev/sda3 Primary
/dev/sda4 <You havn't created third Primary Partition yet and its reserved for that.>
/dev/sda5, 6, 7....... Logical partitions inside Extended.

You wont have any problem in mounting any partition.

To make things a bit simpler, I would suggest you to create partition structure like this

/dev/sda1, 2 and 3 Primary Partitions.
/dev/sda4 Extended Partition.
/dev/sda5, 6, 7, .... Logical Partitions.

Logical Partitions always start from /dev/sda5.

Kewl! Off I go, then. Is there any way to change the partition name after GParted finished? I like the structure you suggested. Or do I have to format the drive again with GParted?

And thank you for the prompt reply! I love this forum!

[devils casper]

Glad to help you dirk_diggler !
Do let us know how it goes.

[i92guboj]

Hi and Welcome !!

You can create 4 Primary Partitions
Or
3 Primary and 1 Extended Partition + 64 Logical Partitions in Extended Partition in Single Hard Disk.

Not that it will change anything, but...

The kernel can handle 64 block devices over the same physical ide drive. If we use hda as an example, then hda itself is the first of those block device nodes. That means that there are 63 free slots to allocate new nodes (hda1-hda63).

That means hda + 4 primary + 59 logical (inside of one of the primary partitions which will be marked as extended).

For scsi drives it's 15, if I am not mistaken. Not sure, though.

[devils casper]

That means hda + 4 primary + 59 logical (inside of one of the primary partitions which will be marked as extended).

For scsi drives it's 15, if I am not mistaken. Not sure, though.

You are right. It was a typo.
One can create 3P+1E+59L ( total 63 ) partitions in IDE and 3P+1E+11L ( total 15 ) partitions in SCSI disks but its really easy to create more partitions.

Just create 4 Extended Partitions and 11 Logical partitions in each Extended Partition. You will have 4 Extended and 44 Logical partitions in SCSI disk too.

I dont think anyone would ever need 59x4 partitions in IDE disk.