Hidden partition

[Ed Cogburn]

Ed Fletcher wrote:

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> Mustafa Abbasi wrote:
>> i am no expert and probably wrong
>> but maybe you should try to checks if your primary partition limit (4)
>> has been reached.
>> if do try changing one of the primary partions to logical ones.
>> 
>> On 7/16/05, *Myron Slover* <tewlmanster at gmail.com
>> <mailto:tewlmanster at gmail.com>> wrote:
>> 
>>     I set up my harddrive with Fedoracore4 and Ubuntu. I have a 80 gig
>>     hd. I set them up with each an individual home partition,root
>>     partition, and boot. They share swap.
>>       Disk /dev/hda: 80.0 GB, 80054059008 bytes
>>     16 heads, 63 sectors/track, 155114 cylinders
>>     Units = cylinders of 1008 * 512 = 516096 bytes
>> 
>>        Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
>>     /dev/hda1   *           1         406      204592+  83  Linux
>>     /dev/hda2             407       30882    15359904   83  Linux
>>     /dev/hda3           30883       51199    10239768   83  Linux
>>     /dev/hda4           51200      102108    25658136    5  Extended
>>     /dev/hda5           51200       53280     1048792+  82  Linux swap /
>>     Solaris
>>     /dev/hda6           53281       53668      195520+  83  Linux
>>     /dev/hda7           53669       73044     9765472+  83  Linux
>>     /dev/hda8           73045      102108    14648224+  83  Linux
>>     Qparted lists dev/hda9 as being a hidden partition. I saved 25 gigs
>>     to install another Linux distro. I cannot use the 25 gigs I saved
>>     because it is flagged as hidden. I installed fc4 first and then
>>     Ubuntu. Ubuntu labeled the 25 gigs as hidden. I guess I need to learn
>>     more about formatting hardrives. How do I flag the partition as not
>>     hidden? Thanks,
>>     Myron Slover
> 
> You have three primary partitions so that's not the problem.  I
> haven't run into anything like a hidden partition before,


I've seen it.  I didn't see the beginning of this thread, but this looks to
me as if the person declared the extended partition as not including the
rest of the hard drive.  You can have only 4 "real" partitions and only one
them can be an "extended" partition (logical partitions exist only inside
an extended partition), so if you want access to all of the hard drive,
*all* of the rest of the hard drive must be in that extended partition if
you're going to use more than 4 partitions.  In this case "hidden" means
inaccessible, because hda9 is merely the remainder of the disk thats not
inside a physical partition, and is thus unusable.  To do this right, they
need to delete back to hda4, then redeclare their extended partition (hda4)
as occupying all the remaining space of the drive.  The hda9 space will now
be inside the extended partition and usable.

At least that's my story, an' I'm stickin' too it!  :)