Why can't i have more than 4 primary partitions.

[dragos240]

I was just wondering, why can't i have more than 4 primary partitions.... It just doesn't make sense to me. Is there a reason? I mean, i know i can have up to 64 logical partitions, but why not 5 or 6 primary?

[wilbbe01]

I was just wondering, why can't i have more than 4 primary partitions.... It just doesn't make sense to me. Is there a reason? I mean, i know i can have up to 64 logical partitions, but why not 5 or 6 primary?

That is all the MBR has space for/is structured to hold.

[cardinals_fan]

This has to do with the MBR structure. I'll dig up some links...

[SunnyRabbiera]

Its a limitation even in the most modern hard drives, its not any df\ault of any OS but I know it has something to do with the boot record.

[dragos240]

is there any way you could change this to make it able to have more than 4? Or is t built into the read only memory.

[cdtech]

Here's some reading material:
http://www.lissot.net/partition/partition-03.html
http://www.bleepingcomputer.com/tutorials/tutorial115.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disk_partitioning

[cardinals_fan]

Why do you need more than four? BSD systems usually require a primary, but do you need to boot that many of them?

[dragos240]

Here's some reading material:
http://www.lissot.net/partition/partition-03.html
http://www.bleepingcomputer.com/tutorials/tutorial115.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disk_partitioning

Huh, it said that Intel based systems were just limited... what about amd?

[dragos240]

Why do you need more than four? BSD systems usually require a primary, but do you need to boot that many of them?

No, i was just wondering, and i was about to request a picture of beastie being stabed by tux, no just kidding.

[cardinals_fan]

No, i was just wondering, and i was about to request a picture of beastie being stabed by tux, no just kidding.
"Fred is one mean looking insect, the go-lucky demon and fat penguin are TOAST! Well, maybe not, but Fred is still one mean looking insect!"
- the DragonFlyBSD Mascot page

[kk0sse54]

No, i was just wondering, and i was about to request a picture of beastie being stabed by tux, no just kidding.

I tried to find that picture but could only find the other way around.

[damis648]

Hm... do GPT (GUID Partitioned) disks have the same limitation?

[cdtech]

Huh, it said that Intel based systems were just limited... what about amd?


By convention, there are exactly four primary partition table entries in the MBR Partition Table scheme, although some DOS operating systems did extend this to five (PTS-DOS)[16] or even eight (AST or NEC DOS)[17][18] entries. Both the partition length and partition start address are stored as 32-bit quantities. Because the block size is 512 bytes, this implies that neither the maximum size of a partition nor the maximum start address (both in bytes) can exceed 232 × 512 bytes, or 2 TiB. Alleviating this capacity limitation is one of the prime motivations for the development of the GUID Partition Table (GPT).

It's a MBR morals issue. See this link:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Master_boot_record

[dragos240]

"Fred is one mean looking insect, the go-lucky demon and fat penguin are TOAST! Well, maybe not, but Fred is still one mean looking insect!"
- the DragonFlyBSD Mascot page

He doesn't look so mean XD:
http://www.dragonflybsd.org/images/mascot.jpg






I tried to find that picture but could only find the other way around.

Same here >.<

[kk0sse54]

He doesn't look so mean XD:
You were saying :twisted:

103573

[dragos240]

You were saying :twisted:

103573


He was talking about the BSD dragonfly not beastie.

Poor tux, http://ubuntuforums.org/images/icons/icon8.gif