Re: [gentoo-user] Boot partitions (WAS: migrating disks (from mounts to disklabels

[David W Noon]

On Tue, 23 Nov 2010 22:10:03 +0100, Mick wrote about Re: [gentoo-user]
Boot partitions (WAS: migrating disks (from mounts to disklabels:

>On Tuesday 23 November 2010 17:18:56 David W Noon wrote:
[snip]
>> The number of primary/extended partitions is limited to 4, and the
>> number of logical drives is limited by the size of the extended
>> partition.  If you can fit more partitions onto one drive than
>> another, it is because either the drive is bigger or the partitions
>> are smaller.
>
>Errm, not exactly.  SCSI/SATAs are limited to 15 (inc. one extended
>partition) and old (legacy driven) IDEs are limited to some 63
>partitions if I recall correctly.  If you use the new libata I think
>you only get 15 partitions for SATA/PATA.

Well that's a software limitation.  I am a little surprised that
the limit is so small, as Windows can support 24 drive letters
(C: through Z:) assigned to hard drive partitions.  Of course,
accessing the CD-ROM would then be a bit sporty under Windows.

Request an upgrade to the SCSI disk driver.

>I know, because I remember some years ago getting a bit
>over-enthusiastic with a new SATA drive and fdisk only to end up with
>partitions that I couldn't mount ...  O_o

Like I said, a software limitation.

The old PATA drivers had their own internal driver for hard drives.
Clearly, it did a more extensive scan of the partition tables than the
SCSI driver.

For me, it is no problem, because most of my mountable "partitions" are
in fact LVM2 logical volumes.
-- 
Regards,

Dave  [RLU #314465]
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dwnoon@××××××××.com (David W Noon)
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