PDA

View Full Version : A question on the partitions Ubuntu makes after you select "erase disk" w/pic



Badojo
August 12th, 2015, 07:23 AM
I recently installed Ubuntu 15.04, during the installation process I was approached with the selection to "erase disk". Now I chose this knowing and hoping it would delete everything off my my SSD. So my question is did it? I had a opensuse distro installed before hand and I had hoped this would remove all of that with just Ubuntu software instead. However when I went to the "Disks" app on Ubuntu it shows 2 additional partitions. Are those created by the Ubuntu install in anyway? Is that normal? Picture is posted below...

https://imagizer.imageshack.us/v2/902x507q90/905/YfE6Kc.png

mystics
August 12th, 2015, 09:09 AM
I can't really read what they say, but my guess is that one is the Extensible Firmware Interface (EFI) and the other is the swap partition. Both of those are normal.

westie457
August 12th, 2015, 10:34 AM
The pic looks like a normal full disk installation.
With the MBR partition table that you are using /root is a primary partition and swap is always created in an extended partition.

Badojo
August 12th, 2015, 04:27 PM
What does Ubuntu even to to utilize those partitions?

oldfred
August 12th, 2015, 05:09 PM
I now prefer gpt partitioning over the 35 year old MBR(msdos) partitioning with its 4 primary partition limit and extended partition with logicals inside it.
GPT Advantages (older but still valid) see post#2 by srs5694:
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1457901
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/GUID_Partition_Table#Advantages_of_GPT
http://askubuntu.com/questions/629470/gpt-vs-mbr-why-not-mbr

But if you want to dual boot with Windows you have to boot in UEFI mode which is now part of hardware in place of BIOS on newer systems.

You have to have the logical partition in the extended with MBR.
And swap is used as RAM memory overflow. Or if you load more applications that RAM can support then is uses swap. System will then be noticeably slower as hard drive or even SSD is much slower than RAM.

But if you have 4GB or more of RAM, you may never use swap. Good to have some just in case.

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/SwapFaq