A Beginner's Guide To Disks and Disk Partitions in Linux - LinuxBSDos

26/04/2016
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TUTORIALS/TIPS
A beginners guide to disks and disk

partitions in Linux
on November 8, 2014
A beginners guide to disks and disk partitions in Linux is an updated version of Guide to disks and
disk partitions in Linux. It is intended to be an absolute beginners guide to understanding
how Linux handles disks and partitions.
If you are migrating from Windows to Linux and are attempting to install any Linux
distribution alongside Windows 7/8 on your computer, this article should come in handy.
Youll read about hard drive naming convention in Linux, how they are partitioned, partition
tables, le systems and mount points.
By the time you are through reading this, you should have a pretty good idea of what you are
doing when installing your next Linux distribution on your laptop or desktop computer. An
understanding of all the aspects concerning how a disk is referenced and partitioned will put
you in a better position to troubleshoot installation and disk-related problems. Most of the
highly technical terms associated with this subject have been omitted, so this should be an
easy read.
1. Hard Drive Naming Convention: The rst thing you need to know is this: Theres no C or D
drive in Linux. There are equivalents, but when you come across a reference to a hard drive in
Linux, youll typically see something like /dev/sda, /dev/sdb, /dev/sdc, etc. The dev is
short for device, and, in this case, a block storage device. The sd is short for SCSI massstorage driver. (SCSI stands for Small Computer System Interface.) For the rest of this article,
the /dev/ part will be dropped, so all references to hard drives (and partitions) will start
with the last part only.
http://linuxbsdos.com/2014/11/08/abeginnersguidetodisksanddiskpartitionsinlinux/
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Lets begin by taking a look at how hard drives are represented in Windows. Figure 1 was
taken from a Windows 8 installation on a computer with two hard drives attached Disk 0
and Disk 1.
Figure 1: Disks and disks partitions as seen from the Windows 8 disk management
tool
Figure 2 shows how those hard drives would be represented in Linux. Where Windows sees
Disk 0 and Disk 1, Linux take a dierent approach. The rst hard drive detected by a Linux
system carries the sda label. In numerical terms, it is hard drive 0 (zero; counting begins from
0, not 1). The second hard drive is sdb, the third drive, sdc, etc. In the screenshot below, there
are two hard drives detected by the installer sda and sdb.
Figure 2: Hard drive naming convention in Linux
Figure 3 comes from a Linux system with three hard drives attached. So thats how hard
drives are referenced in Linux sda, sdb, sdc, sdd, sde, , sdz
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Figure 3: A Linux installer showing 3 detected hard drives
2. Partition Tables: In simple terms, a partition table describes the layout of partitions of a
hard drive. There are two partition table standards MBR (Master Boot Record) and GPT
(GUID Partition Table). MBR, also know as ms-dos, is what you might call the rst standard.
GPT came much later. If youre interested in the historical and technical details about both
standards, see these Wikipedia articles GUID Partition Table and Master Boot Record.
The MBR partitioning scheme is what youll nd on older computers. Newer computers
support both schemes, so its still possible to use an MBR partitioning scheme on those
computers. MBRs major limitations led to the development of GPT. Those limitations are:
1. It does not allow the conguration of more than four main partitions. Those partitions are
called primary partitions.
2. Disk partitions are limited to 2TB
Newer computers come with a replacement rmware for the old BIOS system called UEFI
(Unied Extensible Firmware interface), and GPT is a part of the UEFI standard. If you bought
a Windows 8 computer, its most certainly installed on a GPT partitioning scheme. If youre
already running a Linux distribution or attempting to install one on a recent Windows 7/8
computer, the easiest method of nding out what partitioning standard is used is to launch a
shell terminal and type sudofdiskl (leave out the sudo if the distribution does not use it).
Figure 4 shows the output of sudo fdisk -l from a Ubuntu Linux installation. The Disklabel
type: gpt line conrms that GPT is in use.
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Figure 4: This output of fdisk -l shows GPT in use
Figure 5 was taken from a Fedora Linux installation. As in Figure 4, the Disklabel type: dos
line conrms what partitioning scheme is in use. In this case, it is MBR.
Figure 5: This output of fdisk -l shows MBR in use
You can also tell whether GPT or MBR is in use by accessing the UEFI setup utility. Under the
Boot menu, look for PCI ROM Priority. You should see two options EFI Compatible ROM and
Legacy ROM. The latter indicates MBR.
3. Partitions and Partition Numbering: To install an operating system on a hard drive, it must
rst be subdivided into distinct storage units. Those storage units are called partitions. Under
the MBR partitioning scheme, there are three dierent types of partitions Primary,
Extended, and Logical. Extended, and Logical partitions will be discussed further down.
With MBR, any partition that is not explicitly created as an extended or logical partition, is a
primary partition. And, as stated earlier, there can be no more than four primary partitions.
Figure 6 was taken from a Linux installation with four primary partitions. If you observe
closely, you will see that the rst primary partition is sda1 and the last sda4. Unlike hard
drives, partition numbers start from 1, not 0 (zero). Any disk space thats not allocated to the
primary partitions is listed as Free or free space. But while it may be free, it is, however,
unusable. And that is because as far as the system is concerned, that free space does not exist.
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Figure 6: MBR partition numbering in Linux
So if you attempt to create another partition using the free space, the installer will throw up
the type of error message shown in Figure 7. The error message will always say, not enough
free space, even when you know that there is space available. And it does not matter whether
that free space is 1 MB or 1 GB. It will be unusable.
Figure 7: Not enough free space on disk error
To get around the four primary partition limitation of MBR, the smart guys involved came up
with the concept of an extended partition. By tagging a partition as an extended partition, it is
then possible to create many more partitions under it. Those partitions are called logical
partitions. Theoretically, there is no limit to the number of logical partitions that you can
create. Note: Only one extended partition may be congured on a single hard drive.
What the concept of extended partition brings to the table is illustrated in Figure 8. You can
see that there are three primary partitions sda1, sda2 and sda3. The fourth partition is an
extended partition, which makes it possible to create more (logical) partitions sda5, sda6
and sda7. Under an extended partition, you can have free space, and that free space will still
be usable. So you do not have to allocate all the available free space to the logical partitions of
an extended partition.
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Figure 8: Primary, Extended and Logical partitions in Linux
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4 Comments
Utsal
February 23, 2016 at 11:40 am Reply
I installed Kali Linux(dual with windows) on a 200GB extended partition and I am regretting it, since I cannot access that drive unless Im on
linux. Why can I not view the extended partition in windows? How to make it accessible? Any other suggestions for me?
connor
January 25, 2016 at 3:03 pm Reply
On my version of ubuntu fdiskl does not list the partition type. The man page species that it can not interpret gpt tables. GNU parted
can.
sudopartedl
shivkumar
August 22, 2015 at 3:48 am Reply
It is not clear that how can we create extended partition ?
nid
August 22, 2015 at 8:22 am Reply
An extended partition is created automatically in the background when you create a logical partition. And that is, if youre using the
installers of Ubuntu and its derivatives and any distribution using the new Calamares installer.
That, of course, only applies if youre creating the partitions under an MBR partitioning table.
See Guide to disks and disk partitions in Linux for more on this.
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2 months ago How to build a Kali Rolling ISO of doom

A beginners guide to disks and disk

Figure 2: Hard drive naming convention in Linux

Figure 3: A Linux installer showing 3 detected hard drives

Figure 4: This output of fdisk -l shows GPT in use

Figure 5: This output of fdisk -l shows MBR in use

Figure 6: MBR partition numbering in Linux

Figure 7: Not enough free space on disk error

Figure 8: Primary, Extended and Logical partitions in Linux

December 18, 2015

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