[Gllug] Win&Lin accessible filesystems

Pete Ryland pdr at pdr.cx
Thu Dec 13 13:35:36 UTC 2001


On Wed, Dec 12, 2001 at 11:15:26PM +0000, tet at accucard.com wrote:
> >What Linux fdisk doesn't let you do, IME, is create any new primary
> >partitions after you've created logical partitions.
> 
> Sure it does. So long as there's enough space left on the disk (and
> slots left in the partition table), you can create primary partitions
> after you've created logical ones.

Earlier versions of Windows didn't like stuff like this - don't know about
recent releases though.  Actually, I used to have four primary partitions
and no extended ones [1] and windows (95beta) was ok with that, but lettered
the drives in a wierd way [2].  But yeah, generally I don't think it's good
to mix and match too much.

Actually, when I tried SCO, it didn't like the idea of me having four
primary partitions and went and rewrote the mbr.  Fortunately, I had enough
info to be able to find them all again and replace the mbr.  I can't
remember what version of SCO it was (I think I ceremonially burnt the CD)
but others have had trouble with it too and I would never recommend it.

Pete, tangent city.  Must be that sort of day :)

[1] I thought it sloppy that each logical partition wastes a whole cylinder
(which can be in the order of a few MB) and all it essentially stores for me
is a 16 byte partition table record.

[2] In earlier versions of dos and windows, when you had two drives, the
first partition on the second drive was D: even with more than one primary
partition on the first drive, but under 95, they seem to letter all the
primary partitions on the first drive before lettering the second drive.
So all the shortcuts to programs I had on my second drive had to be changed
from D: to E: and some programs just refused to work after the change.  Grr.
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