[SOLVED] Safe to format Extended partition?

x111 · 08-06-2010, 01:16 AM

My new Debian box is running well and stable enough for me to decide to swipe out WindowsXP altogether. I have a 40GB HDD, which has the following partition scheme (after Windows was removed and hda1 was converted to Linux native type)

Code:

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/hda1   *           1        1762    13313159+  83  Linux
/dev/hda2            1762        5168    25756889    f  W95 Ext'd (LBA)
/dev/hda5            1762        3985    16813408+   b  W95 FAT32
/dev/hda6   *        3986        5018     7809448+  83  Linux
/dev/hda7            5019        5168     1133968+  82  Linux swap / Solaris

As you can see, my Linux is in the 2nd logical partition hda6 which contained in the extended hda2. The 1st logical partion hda5 is the one I want to erase the data and convert to Linux filesystem in order to have more space. (Yes I can mount it ntfs-3g and use it without any problem, but I just want to say farewell to as many things Microsoft as possible)

. What I'm worried about is whether it's safe to do that, without damaging the extented partition which contains the root file system for Debian.

Thanks for all your help and suggestion.

syg00 · 08-06-2010, 02:19 AM

Quote:

Safe to format Extended partition?

No - you *really* don't want to do that.
Re-formatting sda5 is safe. It would be best (for your sanity later on) to also change to partition type at the same time.

tommyttt · 08-06-2010, 02:30 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by x111

My new Debian box is running well and stable enough for me to decide to swipe out WindowsXP altogether. I have a 40GB HDD, which has the following partition scheme (after Windows was removed and hda1 was converted to Linux native type)

Code:

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/hda1   *           1        1762    13313159+  83  Linux
/dev/hda2            1762        5168    25756889    f  W95 Ext'd (LBA)
/dev/hda5            1762        3985    16813408+   b  W95 FAT32
/dev/hda6   *        3986        5018     7809448+  83  Linux
/dev/hda7            5019        5168     1133968+  82  Linux swap / Solaris

As you can see, my Linux is in the 2nd logical partition hda6 which contained in the extended hda2. The 1st logical partion hda5 is the one I want to erase the data and convert to Linux filesystem in order to have more space. (Yes I can mount it ntfs-3g and use it without any problem, but I just want to say farewell to as many things Microsoft as possible)

. What I'm worried about is whether it's safe to do that, without damaging the extented partition which contains the root file system for Debian.

Thanks for all your help and suggestion.

It is safe if done properly. First BACKUP everything on the linux partition (hda6). Then use a program such as PartedMagic (free d/l from http://www.partedmagic.com. Burn it to CD and boot from it. Open the Partition Manager (Gparted), delete hda5, and resize hda6 which becomes the new hda5. Save the changes and while still in PartedMagic, edit /etc/fstab. That is an assumption since you didn't specify which linux distro you're using (looking back I see you did say Debian. Change the boot device names from hda6 to hda5 if that's the format Debian uses.

Tom

x111 · 08-06-2010, 05:13 AM

Thank you for your replies tommyttt, syg00. I'll go for that this weekend. As my CD drive no longer works and I have no flash drive at hand to boot into GParted, I think I'll just format it ext3 and leave it there until I can find a way to merge it with hda6.

(I was confused Extended with 1st logical partition - thank you syg00)