Arch Linux

TcShadowWalker

Member

Registered: 2013-06-04

Posts: 6

Partition Table Problem

Hey folks,

I installed Arch Linux a while back.
The problem I'm facing isn't related to Arch, but maybe someone knows an answer.

$  sudo sfdisk -l -u M
Disk /dev/sda: 121601 cylinders, 255 heads, 63 sectors/track
sfdisk: Warning: extended partition does not start at a cylinder boundary.
DOS and Linux will interpret the contents differently.
Units: cylinders of 8225280 bytes, blocks of 1024 bytes, counting from 0

   Device Boot Start   End    MiB    #blocks   Id  System
/dev/sda1   *     1  25600  25600   26214400    c  W95 FAT32 (LBA)
/dev/sda2     25601  75763  50163   51366912    7  HPFS/NTFS/exFAT
/dev/sda3     435764  435973    210     215040   83  Linux
/dev/sda4     435974+ 953868  517895- 530323457    5  Extended
/dev/sda5     435975  953868  517894  530323456   83  Linux

This is what my partition table currently looks like on my 1TB hard-drive.
sda1 is a windows recovery partition, sda2 is a windows system partition, sda3 is /boot with grub bootloader, sda5 is my main linux partition, containing an LUKS-encrypted LVM.
sda2 is about 50 GB in size and ends at 75763 MB, while the next partition, sda3, begins at 435764.
So there is a lot of unused space in between (roughly 350 GB).

This is because i deleted the former windows ntfs partition at that space (that was using the whole 400 GB there) and wanted to resize it into TWO seperate ntfs partitions.
However, I didn't think of the limitation of only 4 primary partitions.
Of course, I don't want to let that unused space go to waste, so what I would like to do:

Make sda3 the first extended partition, and inside it, create the two 'logical' partitions containing the 350 GB for windows and the small rest for the /boot partition.
However, this does not seem possible with fdisk. Maybe sfdisk could be of help, but I'm unsure how to do it.

Any suggestions?

Thanks in advance.

henk

Member

From: Weert, Netherlands

Registered: 2013-01-01

Posts: 334

Re: Partition Table Problem

Is it a thought using the gparted live medium to move sda3 to the left next to sda2?
Then resize sda4 to the left to cover the free space.
You then will be able to create a logical ntfs partition in sda4 covering the free space.

I'am not 100% sure about it, but to have sda3 as the first extended partition, you would have to
delete the existing sda3 partition. sda4 will then change to sda3.

I'am merely suggesting gparted because I'am a total noob concerning  fdisk and sfdisk.

Last edited by henk (2013-06-05 16:23:09)

cedeel

Member

From: ~

Registered: 2009-08-25

Posts: 176

Website

Re: Partition Table Problem

You could move sda3 to right after sda2, then expand the extended partition.

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