Arch Linux

alexanderthegre

Member

Registered: 2012-07-29

Posts: 66

[SOLVED] Dual boot on hp mini

A friend of mine recently got a hp mini 210, and wants me to help them set up a dual boot (arch/windows).
The problem is, it came with 4 primary partitions, and I can't have more than 4 primary partitions on one hard drive-- hence, I can't add an extended one for arch. The partitioning scheme is as follows:

/dev/sda1 SYSTEM
/dev/sda2 <no label, 198 gigs>
/dev/sda3 RECOVERY
/dev/sda4 HP_TOOLS
unallocated

Anyway, does anyone know how to get around this?

Last edited by alexanderthegre (2012-08-25 04:14:02)

DSpider

Member

From: Romania

Registered: 2009-08-23

Posts: 2,273

Re: [SOLVED] Dual boot on hp mini

MBR-formatted drives can only contain 4 primary partitions. But you can delete one of those and create an extended partition, which will fit as many logical partitions as you'd like.

GPT-formatted drives , on the other hand, do not have this limitation. You can use up to 128 primary partitions.

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alexanderthegre

Member

Registered: 2012-07-29

Posts: 66

Re: [SOLVED] Dual boot on hp mini

Hey, thanks! I'll try that.

(I'll mark this as solved when I test it in the morning)

Update:
I didn't set the disk to GPT, instead I deleted the recovery partition. It's working now.

Last edited by alexanderthegre (2012-08-24 19:14:20)