Re: [opensuse] Maximum number of partitons

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On Tuesday, 2010-01-12 at 11:44 +0100, Istvan Gabor wrote:

2010. január 12. 0:47 napon "Carlos E. R." <> írta:

On Monday, 2010-01-11 at 20:38 +0100, Istvan Gabor wrote:

What is the maximum number of partitions that can reside on a hard disk
and/or can be handled by openSUSE?

[snip]

In 10.3 you have unlimited (meaning 63) number of partitions (only four
primary), if you use the traditional library with IDE disks (PATA), which
gives names like hda, hdb, hdc, etc. If you use the new library (sda, sdb,
sdc...), which emulates scsi, you have partitions 1..15, that's all. For
SATA drives you need the new library, no choice.

This means if I use SATA disk (no matter which driver I select at boot since for SATA the new driver is used), I will not see more than 15 partitions on the SATA disk. On parellel ATA disk I will see all the partitions (up to 63) if I use the old driver. This applies to SUSE 10.3, 11.0 and 11.1 (kernel version < 2.28). Is this correct?

Yes. You can, I think, use the old driver on sata machines by selecting legacy or compatible mode in the bios, if it supports it.

What is the case with pre 10.3 systems? They use the old driver and see all IDE partitions, but how they handle SATA disks?

I don't know how it handles sata (I don't remember, I didn't have a sata machine then). I think it was being actively developed at the time, and changing.


By the way. The typical wording is 16 partitions maximum. Or perhaps 15. It is less, in fact. The limit is that you can have partitions numbers 1 through 15 (0 means the whole disk). Numbers 1 to 4 are primary, and one of those primaries has to be an extended partitions. Thus you get 3 primaries and 5..15 logical, ie, 11 logical. Total: 14 partitions, as Felix says.


However, in 11.2 you have again unlimited (AFAIK, really unlimited) number
of partitions with scsi names, ie, the new library. This is new, and I
understand, pushed by suse/novell on the kernel :-)

But openSUSE 11.2 reference guide says (in chapter 2.1.1 Partition Types):
"The maximum number of logical partitions is 15 on SCSI, SATA, and Firewire disks
and 63 on (E)IDE disks."

Which one is correct?

The doc is incorrect. Devs got ahead of documentators ;-)

Really, 11.2 is a very nice distro. Try it - unless you need kde3, that is.

- -- Cheers,
Carlos E. R.
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