how many Primary Partitions in one IDE hard disk?
 

I have one IDE 18GB hard drive. I created /boot force to be primary partition and used 4GB for SWAP, / filesystems.

Now I have left 13GB free..Can I create Primary partition on that one?
I tried to create but when I created Logical volume on that, it only show 4GB maximum.

Can anybody explain please?

Data Sheet[/b]

Hello DataSheet!

On one single HDD you can put only 4 primary partitions, but the 4th MUST be divided to logicals. So, effectively you only can have 3 primary partitions. As I figured out on hda1 you have a linux partition, on hda2 a linux swap, and you have 13GB unallocated space. Right? If not, please specify with the hda1, hda2, hda3, etc. system your partitioning, and the desired partitioning. It will help me and the others to fully understand your current situation. Thanks

hda1 = /boot = 100MB
hda2 = / = 4096MB
swap = 1024MB

Now I have 1300MB(13GB) free and I made it physical Linux partion, when I create logical volume group, it gives me only 4GB maximum.


Data Sheet

I have to step in here because it is true that a hdd can have a maximum of 4 primaries but is is also true any one of the primary can be turned into an extended partition.

If a Linux user starts partitioning a hard disk and opts for a logical partition the hda1 (or sda1) will immediately turn into an extended partition and his/her first logical partition is always at the 5th position, namelt hda5. Hda1 to hda4 are reserved primaries but a maximum of one can be an extended partition.

Don't take my owrd for it, try it with cfdisk program on any hard disk. No permanent change to the partition table unless you click "write".

If you want to see an example here is one

Are you trying to create a logical partition or a logical volume group? (Not the same thing)

Please post the output of fdisk -l (run as root)