230 lines
3.9 KiB
HTML
230 lines
3.9 KiB
HTML
<HTML
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>A note about hard disks and partitions</TITLE
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NAME="AEN72"
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>4. A note about hard disks and partitions</A
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></H1
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><P
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>A hard disk can have a maximum of <TT
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CLASS="LITERAL"
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>4</TT
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> primary
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partitions – don't ask me why, I don't know. Apart from primary
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partitions a hard disk can also have what is known as an extended partition
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which inturn can hold a number of logical partitions – I believe the
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number is close to <TT
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CLASS="LITERAL"
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>15</TT
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>. The extended partitions are not
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real partitions like primary or logical partitions in that they don't store
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data but are actually containers for logical partitions which is where data
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is actually stored – as you can see it is uneccessarily complex. Thus
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in Windows <I
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CLASS="MEDIALABEL"
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>C</I
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> is a primary partition and if you used
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Windows <SPAN
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CLASS="APPLICATION"
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>Fdisk</SPAN
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> – Windows
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<SPAN
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CLASS="APPLICATION"
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>Fdisk</SPAN
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> will not make more than one primary
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partition to partition your hard disk – <I
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CLASS="MEDIALABEL"
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>D</I
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> is
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usually the first logical partition of the extended
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partition. <I
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CLASS="MEDIALABEL"
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>E</I
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> would be the second logical partition
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and so on. In Linux things are slightly different. The first primary
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partition is called <TT
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CLASS="FILENAME"
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>/dev/hda1</TT
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>, the
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second primary partition <TT
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CLASS="FILENAME"
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>/dev/hda2</TT
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>
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upto the fourth which is <TT
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CLASS="FILENAME"
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>/dev/hda4</TT
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>.
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Linux refers to the an extended partition as in the case of a disk with
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<TT
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CLASS="LITERAL"
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>1</TT
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> primary and one extended partition as
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<TT
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CLASS="FILENAME"
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>/dev/hda1</TT
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> for the primary and
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<TT
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CLASS="FILENAME"
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>/dev/hda2</TT
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> for the extended. The
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logical partitions of the extended partitions are referred to as
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<TT
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CLASS="FILENAME"
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>/dev/hda5</TT
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>,
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<TT
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CLASS="FILENAME"
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>/dev/hda6</TT
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> and so on. The second hard disk
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would be referred to as <TT
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CLASS="FILENAME"
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>/dev/hdb</TT
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>,
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the third <TT
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CLASS="FILENAME"
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>/dev/hdc</TT
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> (usually the
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cdrom drive if set as secondary master) and the fourth and last hard disk as
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<TT
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CLASS="FILENAME"
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>/dev/hdd</TT
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> (last because the
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motherboard has place for a maximum of <TT
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CLASS="LITERAL"
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>4</TT
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>
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<SPAN
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CLASS="ACRONYM"
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>IDE</SPAN
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> devices) <SPAN
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CLASS="ACRONYM"
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>SCSI</SPAN
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> devices are referred
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to as <TT
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CLASS="FILENAME"
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>/dev/sda</TT
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> – thank god for
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that.</P
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>Next</A
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>The basics</TD
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> </TD
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>The concepts</TD
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