Is there a down side to using a logical partition?

Chronothread · 05-05-2009, 11:34 PM

I recently bought a new computer and the initial stuff (i.e. vista) hogs up three physical drives. I want to put Ubuntu on the computer but I also need a swap. Will putting Ubuntu on a logical drive have any negative effects or will Ubuntu work just as well there as on a physical drive? Thanks.

ronlau9 · 05-06-2009, 12:12 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Chronothread

I recently bought a new computer and the initial stuff (i.e. vista) hogs up three physical drives. I want to put Ubuntu on the computer but I also need a swap. Will putting Ubuntu on a logical drive have any negative effects or will Ubuntu work just as well there as on a physical drive? Thanks.

What do you really mean by this ?
Normally we understand under a physical drive hardware
Logical drive is a partition on a hard drive
Yes you can install Ubuntu on a partition.
But you need a boot loader
Either you use the Vista loader to boot Ubuntu too or let GRUB do the booting.
Using GRUB means that GRUB should be written in MBR overwriting Vista boot
loader
Which type of booting you prefer is up to you

widget · 05-06-2009, 12:28 AM

What you are refering to is a type of partition. Your HDD is limited to 4 "primary" partitions. An "extended" partition is a type of Primary partition.

The difference is that you can have "logical" partitions within the "extended" partition.

Your computer only has one HDD does it not? The three you are seeing are partitions of one disk. The first is relatively small. The other 2 are huge. If you get a liveCD and boot from it you can use "gparted" partition editor to take a look at them. You will see that there is little in the 3rd partition.

That is your recovery partition. If you do not have an install disk for Vista it will do you little good and if you have an install disk and back up your data you don't need the sucker anyway.

If there is 25-50Gb free in that partition I would shrink the sucker and put an extended partition in the space cleared out. You will need to use an extended to have a swap partition or you will be trying to have more than 4 primaries.

If you have 35Gb or more I would recommend a 10Gb root (/) partition and a 3 Gb swap and the rest as a home (/home) partition in this order /, /home, swap.

This is nice if you bugger something and have to reinstall. While you should still backup your data, you can probably reinstall / and still keep all your data and personal settings.

The draw back that I see to you using a logical partition is that it will give you the opportunity to use a FUN and stable OS.

I recommend Ubuntu 8.04 (Hardy Heron) or Mandriva2009-gnome.

You can download LiveCD ISOs and burn them to a disk and try them out without changing anything on you computer. It will run slow off the CD but you can play with several and make sure they work with your hardware.

Give it a whack. (see signature) HAVE FUN

onebuck · 05-06-2009, 07:20 AM

Hi,

Quote:

Originally Posted by Chronothread

I recently bought a new computer and the initial stuff (i.e. vista) hogs up three physical drives. I want to put Ubuntu on the computer but I also need a swap. Will putting Ubuntu on a logical drive have any negative effects or will Ubuntu work just as well there as on a physical drive? Thanks.

If you wish to keep the 'M$ Vista' then I would suggest that you use the tools available with M$;

Code:

Start > Right Click Computer > Manage > Disk Management

You can then select the drive to defragment first then do a re-size to the desired size. That way you won't experience problems with your system.

I like using the tools available on the M$ drives to prevent problems experienced by using other vendor tools. As for the use of a logical partition for one of your primary partitions will greatly expand your hdd to you for any serious work with your computer. I don't care if you are using a GNU/Linux or M$ OS the use of a logical partition will allow better organization and expandability.

The data below is for a system with dual boot for a WinXP and GNU/Linux with the hdd that has 3 primaries along with a extended partition that contains the logical partitions;

Code:

~# fdisk -l

Disk /dev/sda: 500.1 GB, 500107862016 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 60801 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0xf5b5f5b5

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sda1   *           1        3824    30716248+   7  HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda2            3825        4074     2008125   82  Linux swap
/dev/sda3            4075       10300    50010345   83  Linux
/dev/sda4           10301       60801   405649282+   5  Extended
/dev/sda5           10301       10425     1004031   83  Linux
/dev/sda6           10426       11671    10008463+  83  Linux
/dev/sda7           11672       12668     8008371   83  Linux
/dev/sda8           12669       12918     2008093+  83  Linux
/dev/sda9           12919       13915     8008371   83  Linux
/dev/sda10          13916       15161    10008463+  83  Linux
/dev/sda11          15162       16407    10008463+  83  Linux
/dev/sda12          16408       28856    99996561   83  Linux
/dev/sda13          28857       41305    99996561   83  Linux
/dev/sda14          41306       53754    99996561   83  Linux
/dev/sda15          53755       60801    56604996   83  Linux

Disk /dev/sdd: 160.0 GB, 160041885696 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 19457 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0xb2214719

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sdd1   *           1        4981    40009851    7  HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sdd2            4982        9962    40009882+  83  Linux

The 'cfdisk /dev/sda' will give you a detailed output;

Code:

~#cfdisk /dev/sda

cfdisk (util-linux-ng 2.13.1)

                              Disk Drive: /dev/sda
                       Size: 500107862016 bytes, 500.1 GB
             Heads: 255   Sectors per Track: 63   Cylinders: 60801

    Name        Flags      Part Type  FS Type          [Label]        Size (MB)
 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
    sda1        Boot        Primary   NTFS             [^C]            31453.48
    sda2                    Primary   Linux swap                        2056.32
    sda3                    Primary   Linux ext3       [/spare1]       51210.60
    sda5                    Logical   Linux ext3       [/]              1028.16
    sda6                    Logical   Linux ext3       [/home]         10248.70
    sda7                    Logical   Linux ext3       [/usr]           8200.61
    sda8                    Logical   Linux ext3       [/var]           2056.32
    sda9                    Logical   Linux ext3       [/tmp]           8200.61
    sda10                   Logical   Linux ext3                       10248.70
    sda11                   Logical   Linux ext3                       10248.70
    sda12                   Logical   Linux ext3                      102396.52
    sda13                   Logical   Linux ext3                      102396.52

Code:

~# cat /etc/fstab
/dev/sda2        swap             swap        defaults         0   0
/dev/sda5        /                ext3        defaults         1   1
/dev/sda6        /home            ext3        defaults         1   2
/dev/sda7        /usr             ext3        defaults         1   2
/dev/sda8        /var             ext3        defaults         1   2
/dev/sda9        /tmp             ext3        defaults         1   2
/dev/sda1        /mnt/winxp       ntfs-3g     umask=000        1   0
#/dev/cdrom      /mnt/cdrom       auto        noauto,owner,ro  0   0
/dev/fd0         /mnt/floppy      auto        noauto,owner     0   0
devpts           /dev/pts         devpts      gid=5,mode=620   0   0
proc             /proc            proc        defaults         0   0
tmpfs            /dev/shm         tmpfs       defaults         0   0

The above is the '/etc/fstab' for the GNU/Linux system. The '/dev/sda1' has the M$ WinXP installed with a Lilo boot loader on the 'MBR' of the hdd. The 'swap' is setup on a primary partition of '/dev/sda2' and GNU/Linux is installed on logical partitions within the extended partition '/dev/sda4'.

Most current GNU/Linux distributions have means to allow the user to setup the hdd scheme to suit the user or allow a custom setup of the hdd. I do my setups from the cli as I like to test my hdd and create the partition scheme so that I won't experience problems for an install. If the hdd does have a problem then I would prefer to know it before a installation that may be faulted because of a hdd.

I suggest that you use a LiveCD from 'The LiveCD List'. That way you can test drive a distribution to get a feel of the one that suits you.

These links and others can be found at 'Slackware-Links'. More than just Slackware® links!

rkelsen · 05-06-2009, 06:26 PM

... But to answer your question (which, while helpful, none of the above seem to have done

), putting Ubuntu on a logical partition will be fine and it will work as if it were on a physical partition.

Note that this applies to all distros, not just Ubuntu. Linux is not picky about where you install it, as long as your boot loader is installed where it can be seen by the BIOS. It is extremely flexible in this regard.

syg00 · 05-06-2009, 08:16 PM

Mmmmm - maybe.
Linux doesn't care. Some distros are so brain-bead as to demand (by default) a primary partition for the install. And fail if not available.
I've had this happen with Fedora.
Can be over-ridden, but most first-time users are unlikely to dive into the "advanced/expert" option of the partitioning task.

rkelsen · 05-06-2009, 08:35 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by syg00

Some distros are so brain-bead as to demand (by default) a primary partition for the install. And fail if not available.
I've had this happen with Fedora.

If this is true, then it would be just another reason to avoid Fedora, IMHO...

i92guboj · 05-06-2009, 09:27 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by rkelsen

If this is true, then it would be just another reason to avoid Fedora, IMHO...

++

Plus in any case it's the fedora installer which doesn't support this feature. That has nothing to do with linux itself.

Yes. Logical is just as well as a primary partition. You could very well format the whole block device and use no partitions at all as well, or even use a loopback file (which is mostly what most livecds do nowadays in conjunction with squashfs and a ramdisk). As said, "extremely flexible".

There's no performance penalty. In which regards linux it's just a location on the surface of your disk.

Chronothread · 05-31-2009, 08:10 PM

Thanks rkelsen. Sorry it took so long to reply, but that was the answer I was looking for. I already knew the basics of the logical partitions and whatnot and I was just wondering if there was a downside to that kind of partition. Thanks again and to everyone else for their time.

billymayday · 05-31-2009, 08:30 PM

I have 2 Fedora installations on logical partitions, so I can say I haven't seen this behaviour.

I believe that BSD generally requires a primary partition.

johnsfine · 06-01-2009, 07:15 AM

You might also care that the physical position of a partition on the disk affects the performance. A partition near the beginning of the disk is typically twice as fast as one near the end.

With a decent amount of ram, for ordinary home use, you may not be using the file system heavily enough to even care about that factor of two in performance.

Of course, if you decide to benchmark Linux vs. Windows on some file I/O task, be aware if you made the playing field hopelessly lopsided.

It is possible to have Windows in primary partitions at the end of the disk and Linux in logical partitions in an extended partition at the beginning of the disk. But it is tricky to get things that way and most people don't. So when you set up a dual boot, you are normally giving the faster part of the disk to Windows.

There is no inherent performance difference to primary vs. logical partition. But most partitioning tools make it easier to put the primary partitions first, which means they are on the faster part of the disk. That is a performance difference.

widget · 09-25-2010, 11:11 PM

There is one down side that I have discovered.

It leads to Multi Boot Syndrome. I suffer from this condition extremely.

It is lots of FUN but folks do tend to think you are weird.