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Linux partitions and limitations
Post 302808491 by Synchlavier on Thursday 16th of May 2013 09:56:21 PM
05-16-2013
Linux partitions and limitations
In recently reading an article on linux basics before I embark and my personal installation project I came across this passage -
IDE drives have three types of partition: primary, logical, and extended. The partition table is located in the master boot record (MBR) of a disk. The MBR is the first sector on the disk, so the partition table is not a very large part of it. This limits the number of primary partitions on a disk to four. When more than four partitions are required, as is often the case, one of the primary partitions must instead become an extended partition. An extended partition is a container for one or more logical partitions. In this way, you can have more than 4 partitions on a drive using the MBR layout.
The MBR layout also limits the maximum size of disk that is supported to approximately two terabytes. The newer GUID Partition Table (or GPT) layout solves this size limitation and also the rather small limitation on the number of partitions. A disk formatted using GPT layout supports up to 128 primary partitions by default and does not use extended or logical partitions. For more information on MBR internals and how the GUID Partition Table (GPT) works, see MBR, EBR, GPT and LVM internals.
So when doing the math it would seem that only a total of 8 partitions 4 primary and the rest extended are allowed on a hdd - is that still the case today with modern SATA hdds -
IDE drives have three types of partition: primary, logical, and extended. The partition table is located in the master boot record (MBR) of a disk. The MBR is the first sector on the disk, so the partition table is not a very large part of it. This limits the number of primary partitions on a disk to four. When more than four partitions are required, as is often the case, one of the primary partitions must instead become an extended partition. An extended partition is a container for one or more logical partitions. In this way, you can have more than 4 partitions on a drive using the MBR layout.
The MBR layout also limits the maximum size of disk that is supported to approximately two terabytes. The newer GUID Partition Table (or GPT) layout solves this size limitation and also the rather small limitation on the number of partitions. A disk formatted using GPT layout supports up to 128 primary partitions by default and does not use extended or logical partitions. For more information on MBR internals and how the GUID Partition Table (GPT) works, see MBR, EBR, GPT and LVM internals.
So when doing the math it would seem that only a total of 8 partitions 4 primary and the rest extended are allowed on a hdd - is that still the case today with modern SATA hdds -
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LEARN ABOUT SUSE
partx
PARTX(8) System Manager's Manual PARTX(8) NAME
partx - telling the kernel about presence and numbering of on-disk partitions. SYNOPSIS
partx [-a|-d|-l] [--type TYPE] [--nr M-N] [partition] disk DESCRIPTION
Given a block device ( disk ) and a partition table type , try to parse the partition table, and list the contents. Optionally add or remove partitions. This is not an fdisk - adding and removing partitions is not a change of the disk, but just telling the kernel about presence and numbering of on-disk partitions. OPTIONS
-a add specified partitions or read disk and add all partitions -d delete specified or all partitions -l list partitions. Note that the all numbers are in 512-byte sectors. --type TYPE Specify the partition type -- dos, bsd, solaris, unixware or gpt. --nr M-N Specify the range of partitions (e.g --nr 2-4). SEE ALSO
addpart(8), delpart(8), fdisk(8), parted(8), partprobe(8) AVAILABILITY
The partx command is part of the util-linux-ng package and is available from ftp://ftp.kernel.org/pub/linux/utils/util-linux-ng/. 11 Jan 2007 PARTX(8)