Disk partitioning is the act of dividing a hard disk drive into multiple logical storage units referred to as partitions, to treat one physical disk drive as if it were multiple disks.
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2answers
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What mount points exist on a typical Linux system?
I have 2 questions.
During Linux installation we specify memory space for 2 mount points - root and swap. Are there any other mount points created without the users notice?
Is this statement ...
9
votes
4answers
1k views
The merits of a partitionless filesystem
I ran into something a couple of weeks ago that I'd never seen before: A filesystem (ext3 I believe) installed to a storage device without a partition. In essence /dev/sdb was the entire filesystem. I ...
13
votes
1answer
5k views
How can I increase the number of inodes in an ext4 filesystem?
I had a problem (new to me) last week. I have a ext4 (Fedora 15) filesystem. The application that runs on the server suddenly stopped. I couldn't find the problem at first look.
df showed 50% ...
6
votes
2answers
19k views
Can I resize the root partition without uninstalling and reinstalling Linux (or losing data)?
I have started using a machine that has both Debian and Windows 7 installed. However, after installing some programs I started getting a message that there is not enough space. I knew that the system ...
2
votes
2answers
292 views
Change main partition size to install another distribution
I have CentOS 5.5 installed, I have no un-partitioned space and the only ext3 partition I have is huge with lots of free space.
Can I change that partition size in order to allocate another one? I ...
24
votes
6answers
11k views
Different linux distros sharing the same /home folder?
what is the best way to share the same /home directories between different linux distribution?
I mean, I want to have both , say, Fedora and Arch, and I want to find my files at home no matter which ...
20
votes
7answers
2k views
How can I use DD to migrate data from an old drive to a new drive?
I am upgrading the internal SATA hard drive on my laptop from a 40G drive to a 160G drive. I have a Linux/Ubuntu desktop which has a SATA card. I would actually like to do the same thing for a couple ...
8
votes
2answers
2k views
Clear unused space with zeros (ext3,ext4)
How to clear unused space with zeros ? (ext3,ext4)
I'm looking for something smarter than
cat /dev/zero > /mnt/X/big_zero ; sync; rm /mnt/X/big_zero
Like FSArchiver is looking for "used space" ...
4
votes
1answer
709 views
Reading a filesystem from a whole disk image
I ran these commands:
VBoxManage clonehd d6b9f0a5-98df-48ca-83c8-91a0809ec349 --format RAW Debian.raw
sudo dd if=~/.VirtualBox/HardDisks/Debian.raw of=/dev/sda5
When I try to mount the partition, I ...
1
vote
2answers
790 views
How to mount ext3,ext4 sitting on VDI VirtualBox HDD?
How to mount ext3, ext4 partition sitting on "Fixed-Size VDI" VirtualBox HardDisk ?
To be more specific, I ma interested in case when VM is not running.
5
votes
1answer
6k views
How to (safely) move /tmp to a different volume?
Today the /tmp directory filled up on a machine at work. The problem was, it was on the root partition which wasn't very big. In order to fix this, a co-worker created a /new/tmp directory elsewhere, ...
4
votes
2answers
704 views
Primary vs Logical partition
I know that you can only have 4 primary partitions on a hard drive. But if you're using less than 4, is there a benefit/penalty for using logical partitions?
6
votes
3answers
3k views
How to copy the partition layout of a whole disk using standard tools
I want to take a backup of the whole partition layout of a hard drive, including logical drives, so that I can restore that layout to another disk. I do not want to copy the contents of the ...
3
votes
1answer
1k views
LVM2 partition alignment
How to do the following with Linux tools :
LVM partition alignment and alignment of partition on LVM ?
What in case where I want to setup LVM partition (for "pv") and then partitions ?
To be more ...
2
votes
5answers
3k views
How do I resize a partition in Ubuntu linux without losing data?
I ran out of space in my on the drive only to find that there was another unformatted partition in the system that is available. I now want to resize the current partition to take in the empty ...
5
votes
2answers
543 views
How can I diagnose and repair missing drive space?
I have a small ext3 / partition on a 2T drive which appears to have a discrepancy in its free space. How can I determine what is causing it and how it can be fixed.
After trying everything I could ...
13
votes
6answers
4k views
What's the best way to partition your drive?
I usually install Linux on a single partition since I only use it as a personal desktop.
However every now and then I reinstall the box and what I simply do is to move my files around with an ...
11
votes
1answer
559 views
What is the difference between “extended” partition and “logical” partition
What is the difference between "extended" partitions and "logical" partitions on my hard disk? What's the need for each? I am using Linux
3
votes
3answers
247 views
When and why do block devices need to be partitioned? [duplicate]
Possible Duplicate:
The merits of a partitionless filesystem
So I've got a block device, say /dev/sda or /dev/loop0. Clearly if I want to boot from the former, or I want to subdivide it ...
3
votes
4answers
3k views
Partition manager that can handle LVM?
I have been looking but neither Gparted nor KDE Partition Manager can handle LVM. Working with the command line is probably fine but it would be clearer to have a GUI tool here. Does such thing exist?
...
2
votes
4answers
2k views
Backup of LVM2 logical volume
I'd like to make backup on external drive of LVM2 logical volume in dd manner.
Approach I consider is to
make lv on extranl drive with identical size
copy with dd
(Please let me know if you see ...
7
votes
1answer
399 views
Can I convert an ext3 partition into ext4 without formatting?
my home directory is on a separate partition which still uses ext3. Is there a way to convert this partition into ext4 in a non-destructive way?
6
votes
3answers
842 views
How to read the in-memory (kernel) partition table of /dev/sda?
I accidentally overwrote my /dev/sda partition table with GParted (full story on AskUbuntu). Since I haven't rebooted yet and my filesystem is still perfectly usable, I was told I might be able to ...
5
votes
3answers
4k views
How do I partition a USB drive so that it's bootable and has a Windows-compatible data storage partition?
split from here
I have a 16gb flash drive, which I want a live ISO to boot from (via unetbootin or something similar). It'll be some 32bit distro that I can plug-in and boot on whatever computer I ...
4
votes
2answers
1k views
Can I split /boot to a different partition on a single partition system?
I have set up my system, configured it and everything, using only one partition for / (ext4).
So no separate home, boot, swap etc.
So the question is:
Is there a way to go from this configuration ...
2
votes
1answer
3k views
How do I determine the new size for resize2fs?
I want to shrink an ext4 filesystem to make room for a new partition and came across the resize2fs program. The command looks like this:
resize2fs -p /dev/mapper/ExistingExt4 $size
How should I ...
13
votes
3answers
3k views
Are there any side effects when two distros share a swap partition?
In order to save disk space, I want to have two OS installations share a single swap partition (a dual-boot). Is this a good idea?
11
votes
3answers
4k views
How can I move the home directory to a separate partition?
I would like to install another distribution but keep my home directory. Is there a way to move the home directory to a separate partition? I don't have an external hard drive available to back up my ...
5
votes
2answers
1k views
Finding the sector size of a partition
I answered this question, assuming that the *.img file had a sector size of 512.
How do I query a device, or the image of a device, to find the correct sector size?
4
votes
3answers
3k views
Hard drive/device partition naming convention in Linux
What is the hard disk drive/device partition naming convention in Linux? For example, [hd0,0], sd0, etc. What does it actually mean?
What is the significance of this when i need to install multiple ...
1
vote
1answer
98 views
Shared partition permission management
I am willing to try a dual boot arch/lmde setup on my laptop next week, but I've ran into a problem: I want to have a shared data storage where my downloads, documents etc would reside and could be ...
5
votes
2answers
727 views
Unpack files and directories from an image created by dd?
I created an image of an NTFS partition using dd.
I wonder if I can unload/unpack the files and directories in the image to any partition whose size is larger than the image size, so that I can ...
5
votes
4answers
2k views
Convert image of a partition into image of a disk with partition table
I have an image of an existing partition generated with dd if=/dev/sdXN of=image.bin. Now I want to use this image as the basis for a virtual machine. I know how to convert the image into a format ...
5
votes
1answer
2k views
How can I quickly copy a GPT partition scheme from one hard drive to another?
On a non GPT partition table I can do
sfdisk -d /dev/sda | sfdisk /dev/sdb
But sfdisk doesn't support GPT partition tables. What can I use instead?
I'm looking for a one or two command solution, ...
4
votes
4answers
167 views
If I have an SSD and a hard disk in a system, can the SSD act as cache for the hard disk?
Say I have some partitions; one on a SATA drive and one on an SSD. I want to create a "virtual" hybrid disk. Is this possible?
3
votes
1answer
116 views
How to mount some folders on a different partition
I recently got an SSD for my computer. Therefore I reinstalled my system and mounted / on /dev/sda1 (which is a partition on the SSD).
To protect the SSD, I managed to mount /tmp on the RAMdisk. ...
2
votes
1answer
621 views
Unable to mount /home/ partition after reinstalling grub after reinstalling windows 7
I've reinstall windows 7 on it's asignated partition and, as usually, it override the MBR with it's own stuff and, thus, it was not possible to boot to my ubuntu 12.04 partition.
I followed the step ...
2
votes
2answers
692 views
Linux Mint: drives' map changing at reboot brings fstab error
I've set up fstab to auto mount media drives on a Linux Mint machine.
The OS is installed on a IDE/ATA Disk while 3 SATA disks hold data to share.
The BIOS has the ATA disk as first boot device.
All ...
2
votes
1answer
430 views
What happens to partition labels after removing a partition?
What will happen to all the remaining partition labels if I remove a single partition? For example if I have a layout that looks like this:
/dev/sda1
/dev/sda2
/dev/sda3
/dev/sda4
/dev/sda5
and if ...
2
votes
1answer
681 views
Dual boot debian/Win XP - hidden partitions and primary partition limit
I decided it's (finally) time to make my eee a debian/WinXP dual boot. I have Windows already installed and chose to sacrifice most of an existing data partition for debian. Here's how the partitions ...
2
votes
2answers
3k views
How do I create a separate partition for my /home directory?
I was reading http://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/Fedora/14/html/Installation_Guide/s1-diskpartitioning-x86.html, but it's not clear to me what this means. What's an LVM Volume Group versus a Hard ...
2
votes
2answers
315 views
Linux installation on an extended drive related
I just want to install another version of same distro linux into the extended partition, i. e. into the /dev/sda7.
Does it make any problem into current Linux and its data and contents?
If no, I ...
1
vote
1answer
302 views
fdisk isn't showing my hard drive as properly formatted (but it is)
I've got 3 1TB drives which I've set up to use LVM. Here's the output of pvdisplay:
--- Physical volume ---
PV Name /dev/sda1
VG Name vgpool
PV Size ...
1
vote
1answer
191 views
convert /dev/md0 to /dev/sda1
I used a Software-RAID I and want to access the data without RAID now.
After
mdadm --fail /dev/md0 /dev/sda1
mdadm --remove /dev/md0 /dev/sda1
I tried
mount -t ext4 /dev/sda1 /mnt
but dmesg ...
1
vote
1answer
177 views
Can a Linux install be moved from one computer to another?
split to here
I have a 16gb flash drive which I want to contain a portable Linux install. If I could just install Knoppix onto the flash drive, and have that work on any computer, I could do that. ...
0
votes
4answers
194 views
Optimal Setup for Windows & Linux - Sharing and Partitioning
This question gets a little complicated so please bear with me.
So we have a new custom designed desktop which we will be mostly a dedicated machine for scientific computations in FORTRAN and ...
0
votes
1answer
256 views
how to restore a logical partition to it's original ext4 format
This question is following Unable to mount /home/ partition after reinstalling grub after reinstalling windows 7 where the diagnostic was that installing windows 7 deleted my /home partion, lovingly ...
