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Linux Partition HOWTO

Tony Harris
Kristian Koehntopp

version 3.4.2, 27 April 2001
based on
Linux Partition HOWTO (version 2.4, 3 November 1997) Kristian Koehntopp
Original authorship noted in HTML comments.

This Linux Mini-HOWTO teaches you how to plan and create partitions on IDE and SCSI hard drives. It discusses partitioning terminology and considers size and location issues. Use of the fdisk partitioning utility for creating and recovering partition tables is covered. The most recent version of this document is here.

  1. Introduction

    1. What is a partition?
    2. Related HOWTOs

  2. Logical Devices

    1. Device names
    2. Device numbers

  3. Partition Types

    1. Foreign
    2. Primary
    3. Logical
    4. Swap

  4. Partition Requirements

    1. What partitions do I need?
    2. Which filesystems need their own partitions?
    3. How big should the swap partitions be?
    4. Placement of swap partitions

  5. How to Partition with fdisk

    1. Notes about fdisk
    2. Four primary partitions example
    3. Mixed primary and logical partitions example
    4. Submitted Examples

  6. How to recover a deleted partition table

  7. Appendix

    1. Formatting Partitions
    2. Activating Swap Space
    3. Mounting Partitions
    4. Fragmentation
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