Quote:
Originally Posted by justacoupleofquestions
trying to understand primary, logical and extended partitions and how to use them when installing arch linux
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Linux doesn't care whether its partitions are primary or logical.
A disk can have up to four primary partitions or up to three primary partitions plus one extended partition.
An extended partition is a container that can hold several logical partitions.
Quote:
in dual boot with win7.
Scenario:
Laptop. 1 disc. 2 partitions. C: for win7 and Q: for recovery.
These has to be intact when installing Arch Linux.
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You need some unpartitioned space to install Linux. So if your win7 partition and recovery partition fill the drive, you will need to first shrink the C: partition before installing Linux.
Shrinking the C: partition is best done within Windows 7. But do not create partitions for Linux within Windows. Instead leave the space unpartitioned.
I'm not sure about arch Linux: Most Linux installers are designed with an obvious choice to use the unpartitioned space on a drive and the installer will partition that space for you as appropriate for that install.
In other cases, it may be easier to boot a Linux liveCD and use the GUI partitioning tool to create the desired Linux partitions before running the installer.
You probably want just a / partition and a swap partition. With just two Windows partitions plus just two Linux partitions, it would be possible to have all four primary. But I suggest making one extended partition from all the space freed by shrinking C: (and/or space that was already unpartitioned before shrinking C:) then make both (all) Linux partitions logical. If you need to use a liveCD to move and shrink partitions later to add more partitions, having logical partitions for Linux gives you more flexibility. Having four primary partitions gives you zero flexibility.