By convention, SCSI disks have a maximum of 16 minor numbers mapped to a single disk. Names without a trailing digit refer to the whole disk, while names with a trailing digit refer to a partition of that whole disk. As far as the system is concerned that free space does not exist until it is partitioned. While it may be free, we cannot use it in that state. With MBR any partition that is not explicitly created as an extended or logical partition, is a primary partition.Īny unallocated space is shown as Free. Logical – Partition that has been created inside of an extended partition.Extended – Special type of partition in which more than the four primary partitions can be created.Only four primary partitions can be created. Primary – Holds the operating system files.

Under MBR – which is the default on virtually all Linux distributions, there are three different types of partitions – Primary, Extended, and Logical. To install an operating system on a hard drive, we have to divide it into distinct storage units. Understanding Disk Partitions and Partition Numbering Those partitions are called primary partitions. It does not allow us to create more than four main partitions.We can have multiple primary partitions, and the drive sizes can exceed 2 TB. GPT overcomes the two limitations of MBR.

While MBR is still in use, the limitations are what led to the development of GPT.

GUID Partition Table (GPT) – GPT came later.

MBR is still the most widely used partition table, it comes with two major limitations.

Master Boot Record (MBR) – MBR also know as MS-DOS, is what us might call the original standard.

There are two standards for the partition table:

/dev/sdb1- The first partition of disk sdbĪ partition table shows the partitions of a Hard Drive or any other storage device.

/dev/sda1 – The first partition of disk sda.

/dev/sdb – The second SCSI disk address-wise and so on.

/dev/sda – The first SCSI disk SCSI ID address-wise.

The sd was short for Small Computer System Interface (SCSI) mass-storage driver. We will see something like /dev/sda, /dev/sdb, /dev/sdc, … etc. The first thing that we need to know is there is no C drive or E drive in Linux.

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