evan Posted January 23, 2004 Share Posted January 23, 2004 Hi, I just got puzzled by the partition work of Linux. Is that better to install Linux on a Primary Partition than on an Extended Partition? I know you can only have 4 Primary Partition at most, so is it a good idea to use all of them? Lastly but not least, different "filesystems" mean different partitions? thx for help. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
markwolfe Veteran Posted January 23, 2004 Veteran Share Posted January 23, 2004 YIKES! You need to read up a bit! lol Here is the Reader's Digest® version: A hard drive can have 4 primary partitions (BIOS limitation) The extended partitions can be 'attached' to the primaries, but this only matters to BIOS. In Linux (and Windows), they are each treated separately. Now, filesystems are just saying what type of format each partition has. FAT, NTFS are Win parititions, and ext, xfs, reiserfs are examples of Linux/unix partition formats. They more or less are just different methods of arranging the data in a partition, and may contain features such as file attributes and error checking/proofing. Hope this helps! Mark Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
markwolfe Veteran Posted January 23, 2004 Veteran Share Posted January 23, 2004 Another note: Linux names them in a sensible fashion, the harddrives are (assuming IDE here): hda: master drive on IDE0 hdb: slave drive on IDE0 hdc: master drive on IDE1 hdd: slave drive on IDE1 numbers are then assigned, in order, for the partitions. if hda had 3 partitions, then they would be numbered from 1-3, as hda1, hda2, hda3 If you used Windows, and added partitions or drives, you get that annoying case where Windows will put a second primary partition before an extended partition on the first primary. (basically, your D: drive changes to E:, and what you thought should be E: is D: :blink: ) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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