Partition Numbering question!

concoran · 07-24-2002, 01:51 AM

Is it always true that
1. the first partition (primary) is called /dev/hda1,
2. the second (primary) contigous /dev/hda2
and so on...? [make conservative assumptions, like your drive is
not SCSI..]

acid_kewpie · 07-24-2002, 02:37 AM

hda1-4 are primary or extended partitions, hda5-> will be partitions inside an extended partition

concoran · 07-24-2002, 04:46 PM

I have an interesting situation.
My earlier harddrive map looked like this,
|<hda1(QNX)>|<empty 1 (unallocated)>|<hda2>|<empty 2(unallocated)>|<hda5>..

Later, I installed BSD after creating a BSD type partition (No 165)
in first empty space.

Upon fdisking, the old hda2 still appears as hda2, and the new
BSD partition appears as hda4. Not sure why...
So, the new map is
|<hda1>|<hda4>|<hda2>|<hda5>.....

Any idea what's going on?

Is it possible to change the name of partition numbers?

Mara · 07-25-2002, 12:36 PM

The numbers are assigned (well, nott exactly, but we can say this) when a partition is created. So when a partition between hda1 and hda2 was created, it took free number.
Note that some OSes (especially Windows) don't handle such situation easily. It may create problems.

progster · 07-25-2002, 02:16 PM

plus you should give it correctly, the numbers are actually like this:

<hda1> primary
<hda4> primary
<hda2> primary
<hda3> extended
<hda5> logical
etc

Btw: i thought windows didn't support more then one primary partition?

~Progster

concoran · 07-25-2002, 06:50 PM

Well, It is possible to change the numbers? like, can I change the
name of /dev/hda2 to /dev/hda3? If yes, how?

Mara · 07-26-2002, 04:11 AM

I think you have hda3... Extended partitions are created inside a primary one. This primary one (you can't use it as other ones) may be hda3.

acid_kewpie · 07-26-2002, 04:24 AM

welll hd3 will be the extended partition, inside them will be virtual partitions, or whatever fdisk calls them

linuxcool · 07-26-2002, 04:55 AM

I believe that the only way to change the numbers of the partitions is to edit the partition table and rearrange the entries. Whichever partition comes first in the table is hda1 and the next one would be hda2.

To make hda2 become hda3 and hda3 become hda2, you would have to swap their entries in the partition table. It's not something you really want to do. You could mess it up.