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Ubuntu has me confused about drives and other storage media. I can pretty much figure out the flash drives and sd cards. My external harddrive also has a name and is easily recognised. My internal hard drive is called Acer because I guess, I have an Acer computer. Confusion comes when I also have "SYSTEM RESERVED"(ALL IN CAPS) AND "52 gb Filesystem". When I installed Ubuntu 11.04 sise by side with a defunct Win 7. I was asked to create a partition and to choose how much space to allocate for it. I chose 60 GB. Where is that partition? What is it named. Is it invisible? Can I rename a drive like in Windows and it keep that name? If I chose to reformat the internal harddrive(Acer) would it clobber Ubuntu? I have a bunch of apps installed now and I don't want to lose them and have to start over.
Thanks,
Paul
As your using Ubuntu the root drive will be called Filesystem if you look at Computer via nautilus (this will be your 60GB partition).
SYSTEM RESERVED and 52 gb Filesystem will be partitions setup either via Windows or the laptop manufacturer.
As for Acer, I think this may the name of the C drive for Windows that Acer gave to the drive.
Drives are identified by device ID i.e /dev/sd[a-z] and partitions i.e. /dev/sda[1-15] etc. However, partitions can also be identified by a partition label if assigned or by UUID. When an external drive is automatically mounted typically the mount point will be the partition label or if none exists the partition ID.
Depending on the distribution your partitions may or may not be automatically labeled during installation. If you just reformat the windows partition it will not effect your linux partitions unless you choose to reformat the entire drive. However, reinstalling windows would overwrite the linux bootloader. Labels can be changed but are mainly for automatically determining mount points when booting.
linux does not have separate drives like windows. Everything i.e all mount points fall under a directory tree with / being at the top. The default mount point for external drives and removal media is under /media/
To see how the all connected drives are partitioned:
sudo fdisk -l (that is a small L )
And I thought *Linux* had me confused?
I think I'm worse off than ever. Here is the output of the four terminal commands posted by syg00. It's all Greek to me.
Distros like Ubuntu try to make things easier for folks used to the Windoze way of doing things. If a filesystem has a label, it'll show that, and if it can recognise a "known" device (like the Cruzer), it'll use that for displays. You didn't show all the data asked for, but here goes:
- My internal hard drive is called Acer because I guess, I have an Acer computer.
This is actually your main NTFS (Win7) "drive" - it shows up as "Acer" as that will be the label given to it by Acer.
-Confusion comes when I also have "SYSTEM RESERVED"(ALL IN CAPS).
Probably a recover partition for Acer, but may just be a Win7 boot partition. "SYSTEM RESERVED" would be it's label.
- I chose 60 GB. Where is that partition? What is it named. Is it invisible?
That is your Linux root partition (the "52 gb Filesystem" you see)- similar to the main Win7 partition mentioned above. It's the one shown as "/" in the df list.
-Can I rename a drive like in Windows and it keep that name?
Yes - "man e2label" in your case.
- If I chose to reformat the internal harddrive(Acer) would it clobber Ubuntu?
No, provided you hit the correct partition.
I think I'm beginning to understand. I'm going to number my questions so they will be easier to answer.
[1] Is this "Acer" drive the Windows partition part of the internal hard drive and 52 GB file system the Ubuntu part of the internal drive?
[2] When I install a Ubuntu software is it installed in the Ubuntu partition or elsewhere? if ubuntu apps are installed only the Ubuntu partition and will i soon run out of space there?
[3] The 52 GB Filesystem is still short by 8 GB of the size I allotted. Did ubuntu grab those 8 GB for housekeeping and made in invisible?
[4] Right now grub(I think) list several options at boot-up one being to load the corrupt Win 7 OS. Would I confuse grub if just deleted everything in the Win 7 partition including the Windows folder? I don't really need to reformat it, just free up space.
I tried the terminal command by opening a terminal in the 8 GB Filesystem I pasted your command "man CRUZER2" this the result I got:
Code:
p3aul@p3aul-Aspire-X3910:/media/2075-A8EB$ man CRUZER2
No manual entry for CRUZER2
p3aul@p3aul-Aspire-X3910:/media/2075-A8EB$
I need solutions for 1 through 4 above. I have found the solution to renaming removable usb and sd cards. Put them in a windows machine and choose rename. That is the only thing I found to work that is 100% fool-proof.
1. Looking at the information provided I would say yes and yes:
Code:
# from df info
/dev/sda6 ext4 53G 42G 8.6G 83% /
/dev/sda3 fuseblk 522G 126G 396G 25% /media/Acer
# from fdisk -l
/dev/sda3 1798 69857 546681268 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda6 69857 76790 55693312 83 Linux
2. Again, from the above it would seem you only have 8.6G left of the original 53G so yes you will run out shortly if left this way.
3. It appears that you have been allotted 2 swap spaces that make up the difference:
Code:
# from parted -l info
7 632GB 636GB 4253MB logical linux-swap(v1)
5 636GB 640GB 4257MB logical linux-swap(v1)
4. No you will not confuse grub unless you pick that option and grub tries to boot windows. If you format the drive and
run a grub-update I think it should remove those items for you.
Again, from the above it would seem you only have 8.6G left of the original 53G so yes you will run out shortly if left this way.
[1]Can I install ubuntu software were i want it or will it always be placed in that partition?
[2] if not, how can I create more space? Can I run some sort of partition software and increase the size of that partition without deleing anything?
Thanks,
Paul
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