[ubuntu-in] How many disks and disk partitions can Linux (ubuntu) handle

[Nandan Vaidya]

On 24 August 2010 22:42, Ramnarayan.K <ramnarayan.k at gmail.com> wrote:

> Hi
>
> Am using an external HD with some data along with my onboard hard disk.
>
> My own board HD has 4 physical partitions as follows
> Lenovo recovery,
> Wincedows OS,
> Wincedows Recovery
> 1 logical extended driver with the following
>
> Swap
> root
> home
> bakup
> 2ndroot
>
> **
> My external HD has about the same about 6 partitions -
>
> But due to some problems i got an error which led me to this bug
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/e2fsprogs/+bug/521648
>
> which leads me to ask - so how many partitions - physical, logical internal
> and external can Linux Handle at one go
>
> ram
>
>
>
Hi,


Well I cannot answer for the number of physical disks. I have never had more
than 2-3 (internal + external) connected at any one time.

As for the partitioning, you can have only 4 primary partitions using the
FAT partition table that we use even now. The last 64 bytes of the MBR ( of
512 bytes) of the disk contain the partition table.
If you use GPT (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GUID_Partition_Table) , then I
guess you can have more than 4 primary partitions, but I have never used it.
I believe Mac systems use GPT though.

I have hit a limitation when the partitions on a single physical disk go
beyond sdX15.
I have not been able to create a sdX16.

So according to this, I guess on a single disk, you can have 3 primary
partitions, with the 4th primary partition being the extended partition. And
within the extended partition you could go from sdX5 to sdX15, from what I
have experienced myself !

My laptop internal HDD (320GB) has the following partitioning layout:

----------------------------------------------------------------
Disk /dev/sda: 320.1 GB, 320072933376 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 38913 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0xe395e395

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sda1   *           1        6374    51199123+   7  HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda2            6375       38913   261369517+   f  W95 Ext'd (LBA)
/dev/sda5            6375       12748    51199123+   c  W95 FAT32 (LBA)
/dev/sda6           12749       22309    76798701    7  HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda7           31871       34415    20442681   83  Linux
/dev/sda8           34416       38670    34178256   83  Linux
/dev/sda9           38671       38913     1951866   82  Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/sda10          26522       31870    42965811    b  W95 FAT32
/dev/sda11          22310       22334      200781   83  Linux
/dev/sda12          22335       24321    15960546   8e  Linux LVM
/dev/sda13          24322       24354      265041   83  Linux
/dev/sda14          24355       26521    17406396   8e  Linux LVM

----------------------------------------------------------------------------

- output of fdisk -l :)




 <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GUID_Partition_Table>Thanks & Regards,
Nandan V
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