Partitioning question

[Alexander Skwar]

· Gary W. Swearingen <garys at opusnet.com>:

> Ouattara Oumar Aziz <wattazoum at gmail.com> writes:
> 
>> Here is the actual state of your disk referring to the block mapping
>>
>> <--------------/dev/hda1------------------------------------->
>> <--/dev/hda5--><---/dev/hda6---><--/dev/hda7--><--/dev/hda8-->
> 
> Even that is something of a fiction, it seems.  According to
> http://www.ata-atapi.com/hiwtab.htm the partition tables implement a
> concept for which the partitions > 4 are best thought of as similar to
> the primary extended partition

Hm - "primary extended parition"... Bad wording: There's no such
thing. hda1 is a primary partition of type 0x05, which means that
the partition type is "Extended".

> Since fdisk gives "1" as the first sector of hda5, I suppose that
> those partition first-sector numbers are actually for each partition's
> table sector and not it's boot sector, which would typically be one
> track further on.

Hm?

hda1 is an extended partition. It uses the cyl. 1 to 2342. An
"extended partition" is a partition type, which can hold (as far
as the extended partition is concerned) unlimited "logical partitions".

Now, hda5 is a logical partition. It starts on the "real" cyl.
1 and goes to 31. The cyl. 1 of hda5 is the exactly same as the
cyl. 1 of hda1.

Alexander Skwar
-- 
Die Wege der Leute mit erstklassigen Ideen verlaufen nicht immer so
gradlinig, wie sich das Sicherheitsbeamte träumen.
                -- Heinar Kipphardt