[GLLUG] Hard Disk Partitions

Chick Tower c.tower@express56.com
Thu, 24 Jan 2002 22:39:52 -0600


I'm a Linux newbie.  I haven't even installed any Linux distro yet, although
I've been doing a lot of reading.  One thing I just read was a Smart
Computing article about setting up a hard disk for multiple OSs, which said
there can be at most four active partitions or three active and one
extended.  I've seen several recommendations for partitioning a Linux
system, and they frequently have more than four partitions.  Can anyone tell
me how this is reconciled with the four-partition limit (if it exists)?  Are
most of the Linux partitions put in one extended partition (which can have
several logical drives)?  Which Linux directories would need to be in an
active partition?  As you might have guessed, I'm approaching this from a
Windows/DOS background, so maybe these are handled differently under Linux,
or are things that current distros handle transparently during installation.

                                        Chick