On Monday 04 April 2005 23:04, Andy Yankovich wrote:
My questions relates to: http://www.novell.com/coolsolutions/feature/11802.html
This article discusses creating separate swap, root, and data partitions to allow for easier installation of a new linux distro, or the re-installation of the existing Linux distro, or trying out a beta version - without the need to backup and reinstall data files. All data files and emulators (such as vmware) would be in a separate partition of its own and could/would remain untouched during future installs.
The above linked article shows two examples of partition table summaries: one with Windows installed on the hard drive and one without the installation of Windows. But in both cases, the article shows a swap partition, three Linux root partitions, and one data partition.
In my case i reinstalled Windows XP in /dev/hda1, Linux swap in /dev/hda2, Linux native in /dev/hda3, and currently have an extended (FAT32) partition in /dev/hda4 of 40 GB in size. (I also have on Drive D another 80GB hard drive which I want to store some data that is not used currently as well as use it as one of my backups of Drive C Linux and Data.
I can find no way to get an *additional three* partitions in /dev/hda/.
I have tried Control Center -> YAST2 -> Partitioner as well as using the Install Disc to change Partitioning. Neither allows me to have more than three primary or extended partitions on one hard disk.
Is there a way to create a logical partition on /dev/hda/? How? I have not seen any evidence of a way outside of using Partition Magic. And is Partition Magic usable in SuSE Pro 9.2? Would its creation allow an additional three partitions at some future date by some (unknown to me) method?
Thank you guys for any help you may be able to provide.
The partition table of a hard drive contains 4 entries. These are the primary partitions. You can only ever have 4 primary partitions. However, one of these can be an extended partition, and inside this you can have multiple, so called logical, partitions. You said you had hda4 as an extended partition, but then you said it was FAT32. This doesn't make sense, since an extended partition doesn't contain a file system, it just contains other partitions. So is your extended partition really not an extended partition? If it were, YaST would offer you the possibility to create logical partitions inside it, assuming there is free disk space left that hasn't already been used in a partition. If it isn't, you will need to delete it and create an extended partition. If you have data on it now, with free space after it that you want to use, don't worry. Just remember exactly where it starts and ends, then you can create a logical partition with exactly the same values, and you should see your data again. But of course a backup is the safe and wise option before you do it. When you mess with partitions, you never can tell what might go wrong, no matter what tool you use