Disk partitioning

[AbeL]

Here's one of those "should I fix it if it ain't broke" questions.I have a two drive system. The second drive has a total capacity of 60GB, and prior to installing Linux it was divided into two 30gb partitions, D:, and E: I have a lot of image and other large data files on D:, but E: was empty, so when I loaded Linux, I reduced E: to 20gb and used the freed 10GB for Mandrake. The install was flawless, and other than some tweaking and a big learning curve still ahead for me everything is running well.When I used Partition Magic to examine what Mandrake partitioning had done I found that all of D: resides in a primary partition. Partition E: and Linux both reside in an extended partition. Partition Magic says that OS's should be (in fact I think they say "must be") in a primary. So, my choice is leave it alone because everything is working fine; or re-partition the drive, and re-load Linux to avoid any potential future problems (if any). If I'm to do a re-format/re-load now's the time to do it because I haven't done much customization to Linux, and more importantly, both D: and E: are empty - I moved everything that was on D: to C:What do you advise? Why?Thanks,Abe

[Prelude76]

Here's one of those "should I fix it if it ain't broke" questions.I have a two drive system. The second drive has a total capacity of 60GB, and prior to installing Linux it was divided into two 30gb partitions, D:, and E: I have a lot of image and other large data files on D:, but E: was empty, so when I loaded Linux, I reduced E: to 20gb and used the freed 10GB for Mandrake. The install was flawless, and other than some tweaking and a big learning curve still ahead for me everything is running well.When I used Partition Magic to examine what Mandrake partitioning had done I found that all of D: resides in a primary partition. Partition E: and Linux both reside in an extended partition. Partition Magic says that OS's should be (in fact I think they say "must be") in a primary. So, my choice is leave it alone because everything is working fine; or re-partition the drive, and re-load Linux to avoid any potential future problems (if any). If I'm to do a re-format/re-load now's the time to do it because I haven't done much customization to Linux, and more importantly, both D: and E: are empty - I moved everything that was on D: to C:What do you advise? Why?Thanks,Abe

i use PM8 myself, and i know what you;re talking about. I think Win9x and WinXP NEED to be on a primary partition, but as far as linux goes, mine is also on an extended partition. i think Lilo and Grub boot loaders are the ones that overcome the "boot into primary partition" limitation of OSes, and PM8's help file isnt complete in explaining that.to answer your question, no, dont worry about it. mine works great too in extended partition.

[Peachy]

Linux partitions can be created in either primary or extended partitions. Windows operating systems by default must be in a primary partition to boot, however, I have learned how to boot Windows 98 from a logical partition. At work in our multiboot computer labs, I set up the OSes in this way: 3 primary partitions as Windows NT 4 Server, Windows 2000 Server, and Windows XP Pro in that order. First logical drive contains a bootable Windows 98SE partition, next partition is an ext3fs for Red Hat 8.0, then a swap partition, then a bootable DOS partition that holds the XOSL files and an autoexec.bat file that provides a Ghost menu.

[AbeL]

Great news, Peachy, thanks! I thought that the PM caution was a little strong, given that everything is working correctly.Time to get on with it!Abe

[Bruno]

Hi AbeOne little addition to this all, next time you upgrade/re-install your Mandrake, don´t go near Partition Magic and just use Mandrake´s resizing-partitioning tool to create or resize additional Linux-native partitions. PM is just not that good in Ext2, Ext3 and Reiserfs, any Linux distro does that more efficient. :D Bruno

[AbeL]

Hi AbeOne little addition to this all, next time you upgrade/re-install your Mandrake, don´t go near Partition Magic and just use Mandrake´s resizing-partitioning tool to create or resize additional Linux-native partitions. PM is just not that good in Ext2, Ext3 and Reiserfs, any Linux distro does that more efficient. ;) Bruno

Hey Bruno:Have I got news for you!PM didn't do such a good job with the DOS partitions either. When I first started PM looking at this drive, it reported that the entire drive had a bad format, offered to fix it, I accepted, it said done, but still reported the same "bad" condition. I told it to reformat the drive, and it said it couldn't. It was strange that this report was coming from their formating tool, but their eval tool said everthing was good. I then tried several other formating tools, (Western Digital, MS,) but none of then made PM happy. So I loaded Mandrake. Its formatter found nothing wrong with the dos partitions, it did what it needed for ext3, and it even made PM happy.So bottom line is: Linux does better with dos partitioning than do native dos tools! (At least, this time )

[Bruno]

Well AbeLI just did not want to bash too hard on PM, but I did hear loads of really horrible stories over the years I use Linux.People really got desperate to the point of jumping out the window, just because of what PM had done prepairing their Linux partitions. ( even ruining their acces to the XP partition )Though I did hear reports that the ¨newest ¨ version is better if you just boot from floppy (?) what they mean by that I do not know.Plus as everybody knows I´m a Mandrake fan, they would expect me to say Mandrake is better . . . it´s hard not to be bias :DB) Bruno

[Peachy]

Well AbeLI just did not want to bash too hard on PM, but I did hear loads of really horrible stories over the years I use Linux.People really got desperate to the point of jumping out the window, just because of what PM had done prepairing their Linux partitions. ( even ruining their acces to the XP partition )Though I did hear reports that the ¨newest ¨ version is better if you just boot from floppy (?) what they mean by that I do not know.Plus as everybody knows I´m a Mandrake fan, they would expect me to say Mandrake is better . . . it´s hard not to be bias :DB) Bruno

There is a known bug with PM, (version 8 in my experience) in which PM messes up the partition table when it displays ext3 partitions. However, this is easily fixed if you understand how partition tables work. Using ptedit, which is copied to the PM rescue disk, you can edit the partition table and correct the partition type ID by changing it back to 83 for Linux partitions and all is well.