Ubuntu Installation :: Partitions On Multi-boot--primary Versus Extended?
Jul 12, 2010
I'm setting up my laptop to dual boot (default Vista installation and Ubuntu). There's also a possibility I may add XP later as a triple boot.
My laptop came with two partitions already, the second one labelled "Recovery". I was planning on adding three partitions, one for the Ubuntu installation, one for Swap, and one for storing my files (accessible to both OSs). However, this would be five partitions (or six, if I add XP later).
I've never had to deal with this many partitions before and just learned about the maximum of four primary partitions.
just got a new laptop with Windows 7 Home Premium 64bit pre-installed, and when I boot into my 11.04 CD, there is no simple option to install alongside windows 7. Only the options to erase the entire disk (wiping windows) or manually specifying partitions. I'd like to keep my windows install as I use it for gaming, but I don't want to mess around with partitions while I don't know what I'm doing. According to the 'Allocate disk space' part of the installation, all 4 primary partitions are being used, a main one for the Windows 7 install, one entitled HP tools, and another two I forget the names of. I have looked up that I may need to turn a primary partition into an extended one,
I am having a 250 GB hard disk in my Acer Laptop. C: - a 65 Gb partition with Win7. D: - a 150 GB partition with general data. and 2 partitions by default - a 13 GB and a 3.5 GB one( I guess backup and recovery by Acer or sumthn) I shrank the D: partition to 135 GB and had made the 15 GB unallocated space to install Ubuntu. Everytime I checked I got the free space shows as 'unusable' in the Ubuntu partitioner. I tried shrinking again with EPM, Win Disk Management and also Ubuntu partitioner. Each time the free space which showed up said Unusable. A friend of mine advised me to defragment and use 'GParted' through the live cd. I did so and when click on the unallocated space to format it said "IT IS NOT POSSIBLE TO CREATE MORE THAN 4 PRIMARY PARTITIONS. If you want more partitions you should first create an extended partition. Such a partition can contain other partitions. Because an extended partition is also a primary partition it might be necessary to remove a primary partition first."
I didnt know all of my partitions were primary! And I dont even want D: to be primary. It just is there to hold some data.
I'm trying to install Crunchbang on a partition I made. I managed to resize my Ubuntu for space to install Crunchbang (which essentially is another Linux OS).I currently have Ubuntu 10.10 and Win7 currently installed. The error I get in GParted is the one above in the title. I know there is a way to install a third OS but this problem is killing me. I need some to help my step-by-step. I'm not that bright when comes to technical terms and writing stuff in the terminal. My current filing system:
Disk /dev/sda: 500.1 GB, 500107862016 bytes 255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 60801 cylinders Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
I somehow messed up my filesystem. I installed Ubuntu directly with LVM. This created an extended partition including a logical one. When I run out of space, I just increased my space (through VMware) and then added a new PRIMARY partition.
Then I added this one to the volumegroup and increased the logical volume. After I did this a few times, there were no longer any primary partitions allowed (only 4). Then I resized the FS, resized the logical volume, resized the volume group, and removed the physical volume. Now I'm no longer able to create an extended volume (only one) but it's not at the end (there are other primary partitions behind this one at the disk), so I'm not able to create some logical volumes.
What is the best possibility to add some space to the LVM and being able to do this a few times in the future again?
further info:
pvscan:
fdisk -l for sda:
There was a /dev/sda3 at the end of the disk. I already deleted this partition.
So the order on the disk is: sda1 | sda2 (extended) | sda5 (logical referred in sda2) | sda4 | free space
Does it matter that there is type "Linux" for sda4 or can I without damaging the lvm just change it (with cfdisk) to "Linux LVM"?
I'm trying to install Ubuntu, Windows 7, Meego, and Android x86 for a project. Here is what I have done so far: Partition the drive into 4 primary partitions of equal size (10gb each). Install Windows7, Android, and Meego onto separate partitions, in that order. Then, install Ubuntu, hoping that GRUB automatically detects the other OS's and creates entries for them. Unfortunately, the only entries in GRUB are for Ubuntu and Windows 7. How do I get to the other 2 OS's (Android and Meego) to show up?
I have first installed Windows7 to sda2 (sda1 being the MBR). Then I installed Ubuntu as follows: sda3 /boot, sda5 swap (sda4 being the Extended partition), sda6 /, sda7 /home. So far so good. Windows and Ubuntu worked fine. I also planned to create another partition for data and two more partitions for Arch Linux. And here is the problem.I just assumed that the Extended partitions were created logical but actually they are also primary. So, as things stand, all my 7 partitions are primary and I cannot create any more partitions.I must've erred somewhere during the Ubuntu installation. Is it possible ti change the Extended partitions into logical, without affecting all the stuff within? Any ideas? Otherwise I will have to delete everything after Windows and install Ubuntu again, making sure that I create logical partitions in the Extended part
I am installing opensuse on my laptop. Dual boot with Windows 7. Two partitions are already taken by windows. I am confused about extended partitions. I know I will need one because I can only have 4 primary partitions.
Here are the partitions I want:
Is there a certain order to create these? Does it matter which ones are primary partitions and which one are part of extended partitions?
I've installed Arch Linux onto my Western Digital SATA drive.I love it, best ever, however, I need the fglrx proprietry driver for better 3-d performace, and decided to create a new partition. I decided to install Linux Mint.Sadly, in all my noobishness, I forgot about the 4 primary partition limit (oops!) and as I have /, /home, swap, and /boot partitions (all primary) already installed, I have run into a bit of a problem.I resized my /home partition (almost 500GB) to about 225, and was then told I have over 200GB unusable space. Is it possible for me to change at least 1 of my primary partitions to logical partitions AND keep all the data intact (AND edit the arch configuration so that it'll still work) so I can install a second linux? I sincerely doubt it
I'm currently dual booting Windows 7 64bit and Ubuntu 10.10 each on primary partitions. Then on the other 2 partitions I have the manufacturer recovery partition (which I am not sure I should remove...), and then a partition for storage and files. Now I want an Arch Linux installation on the hard drive, but obviously I cannot create a new primary partition because I already have 4. I found out that linux can run from a logical partition (which you can have multiple of)..However I do not want to format my Ubuntu partition and I'd prefer to keep the data on there all intact. Is there a way to move my Ubuntu installation (on the primary partition) to an extended partition where I could put multiple logical partitions for multiple linux installations?
i decided to build a home server on an AMD64 (buyed some years ago) for file storage, printer sharing and something else... I've searched a lot for "the best distros for server" and discarding extreme solution (like command line only) what remains is: Ubuntu, Fedora and Debian
Now the problem: how to install more than one distros on the same hdd? what i know is that i need a bootloader (grub/lilo) and partitions for boot,swap, and remaining space will be split for the distro itself.
I think is a good idea to have a partition only for files (/data) that all distros can access, but for sure i'd like to have one /root and one /home partitions each distro!
I can't understand if the correct way is first of all to install a distro (let's say ubuntu), then set up everything such as partitions and bootloader and then install other distros. I'd like to know if it is possible to manage dinamycally the space reserved for distros, so i'll be able to install 2,3,4,5...distros with no problems.
when i install fedora 11 after windows 7 ,i can not partition and takes errors,it is of primary partitions that is about 77GB that windows 7 had installed on it ,but when i install ubuntu ,it can be installled without any error ,when i asked for this one said me that ubuntu has grub installer that reference to another where for primary partition ,
For a fresh installation using manual partitioning, one single disk (IDE).
If I selected:
For the root partition, I would like to use ext4, 10GB, but by default, the partition type 'extended' is suggested. Would there be any difference (advantages, inconveniences) if I selected the primary partition instead?
When my netbook has an extended screen, using an external monitor, all of the panels stay on the netbook, not the big monitor. When I connect an external monitor, I want to use it as my primary screen. I only really intend to use the netbook screen for skype calls (so I am looking into the webcam, and not away from it) since it is so small. I wish the secondary screen to be the netbook, not the external monitor. How can I do this?
I have a dual boot on my laptop between XP and Ubuntu with a storage partition.that gives me total of 4 primary partition
-Windows -Storage -Ubuntu -Swap
I now want to add a OSX to my laptop in tripple booth. I did shrink the windows partition and now I realized that all my partitions are primary and cannot create a new one with the space I shrink from windows.Is it possible to merge ubuntu and its swap into extended/logical partitions so I can create a new primary for Mac OS X?
My motherboard on my old HP laptop died, so I bought a new machine that's running Windows 7.The machine is a Compaq (HP) and has a 250 Gig hard disk. I used Windows Disk Manager to shrink the space Windows is in so I can install Ubuntu in that space.When I start the partitioner it says the free space is unusable. I ran Gparted and sure enough, there are already 4 primary partitions on my drive:
/dev/sda1 = ntfs - SYSTEM /dev/sda2 = ntfs unallocated
Something bad happened to my partition table, so right now I'm working from a Live CD. My partition table is completely screwed, although the data on the lost partitions hasn't been overwritten. I've been messing around with TestDisk for about an hour, but I still didn't figure out how to fix my problem.
Before the crash, I had 5 partitions:
And here comes the extended partition:
TestDisk can see all those five partitions. I can mark swap as Logical, but I can't do so with the 400GB NTFS partition - there is just no selection. Turning on "expert mode" didn't help. I have read about using sfdisk to fix partition table, but I don't think I'm able to do it by myself.
Here's how it looks in TestDisk:
Code:
And, here is my slightly modified sfdisk table dump:
Code:
I've filled sizes according to TestDisk's findings. First 3 partitions were OK, the problem lies in the extended partition holding 2 logical ones.
I have the following disk partitions from the left side of partition table as of now: NTFS - Primary windows vista Extended - 3 Nos. all NTFS - middle one contains data Unallocated space NTFS - Primary NTFS - Primary HP Recovery
My intention is to add unallocated space to the extended partition. Will I be able to use Gparted to do it?
Or can I install Ubuntu in one of the extended partitions and make this unallocated partition the home partition for Ubuntu. I am not able to add new partition in this unallocated space as disk manager in vista throws up an error no free disk space to complete the operation. I read in some forum that OEM installations allow only 3 primary partitions and one extended or 4 primary ones. Is it true for OEM's only or its a universal rule?
I'd like to create a swap partition having already reached the four partitions per disk limit. So I'd like to create an extended partition and move some partitions into it. The question is which partitions to move and where to create the extended partition.
Some partitions have so much data that I cannot back them up, so I'd prefer to avoid performing operations that might risk them.
By the way, is there a command line tool that provides equivalent output as gparted?
I formatted a 16GB USB flash drive via right click. Then I ran gparted and got as far as this [image attached] Do I choose Primary Partition or Extended Partition for this second partition?
Around 2008 i seem to remember PartEd on the command-line was able to rescue deleted partitions and gave a choice of whether to recover the partition as a Primary or Logical Partition. I have tried testdisk but didn't really grok what i was doing. I successfully moved a "Windows Recovery" partition to the end of my hard-drive, immediately after the drive's Extended Partition.
I just got an Hp Pavillion laptop, and I'm trying to install Ubuntu. I resized the Windows 7 partition, and tried to install, but was unable because you can have no more than 4 primary partitions. Is there any way around this?
The current partitions are: Windows 7 ntfs file system BOOT RECOVERY HP_TOOLS
I bought a PC with Window Vista on it as my partner needs it. Using gparted I set up Primary partitions for Vista OS (sda1) and Ubuntu OS (sda2), plus an extended partition for Vista files, Ubuntu /home and swap:
fdisk -l Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System /dev/sda1 * 1 3969 31880961 7 HPFS/NTFS /dev/sda2 3970 5294 10643062+ 83 Linux
[code]...
My problem is Vista (as always). The 30GB I allocated is not enough, even just for the OS and it won't now boot from GRUB, though I can see it from GRUB. I don't want to do anything that risks a problem for Ubuntu. Will grub still see both OS if I wipe sda1 (Vista OS) and reinstall Vista OS on the extended partition sda6? Ideally I would like to merge sda1 with sda6 and install Vista on that, but that looks way too risky / impossible.
Edit - There is another drive on the PC which is much larger and I use for backup. Is there any scope for installing Vista on that one so that GRUB still identifies both. Not ideal as I like having one as the backup for the other.
After I formated my windows partition using GParted it became Unallocated and moved under Extended partitions. I can't create the unallocated partition as primary one, or drag it out of the extended ones. I tried GParted live CD also, but nothing worked.
Why is it faster to have more primary partitions when using Linux? Please give some real examples; I know some theoretical reasons but I don't understand them well.
I have a laptop with Ubuntu 9.10 installed. It will not boot to the login screen. If I remove this HDD and connect it as a secondary drive to another PC running Ubuntu, will I be able to access the files on this HDD? There is a lot of data which I haven't backed up which I need to retreive. I don't think the hard drive has failed.
