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I am trying to figure the disk configurations on an Ubuntu server I am using. Since it seems that the file system is only 110GB, I checked its partitions:

sudo fdisk -l

and got this -

Disk /dev/sdb: 250.1 GB, 250059350016 bytes

and

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sdb1 * 2048 220291071 110144512 83 Linux
/dev/sdb2 220293118 488396799 134051841 5 Extended
/dev/sdb5 220293120 488396799 134051840 82 Linux swap / Solaris

as I understand I have a hard disk of 250GB w\ 3 partitions. I guess the first one (sdb1) is the file system I see, But what does it mean Extended system in sdb2? plus, is sdb5 another possible boot?

Thanks

Yael N
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  • sdb5 is swap, this is an expansion to the system RAM, when it's too loaded this partition is being used in addition, in Windows there's swapfile.sys or something like that which holds the same concept. – Yaron Sep 22 '19 at 11:26
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    Try also pasting the output of lsblk and blkid, it will probably shed some more light on your situation. – Yaron Sep 22 '19 at 11:29
  • https://askubuntu.com/questions/151968/what-does-the-term-extended-partition-mean-is-it-safe-to-use-this-type-of-par – mook765 Sep 22 '19 at 13:48
  • What it means is that your disk is in MBR format, and that one or more partitions (sdb3, sdb4) have probably been deleted at some time. Gparted or parted would be a good way to confirm this. You probably have a EFI/UEFI server, which should really use GPT formatted disks (which aren't limited to 4 partitions). – heynnema Sep 22 '19 at 15:39

1 Answers1

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An Extended partition is a special type of partition that contains "Free Space" in which more than the four Primary partitions can be created. Partitions created within the Extended partition are called Logical partitions, and any number of Logical partitions can be created within an Extended partition. Example: Say your PC can support 4 primary partitions you can consider as C, D , E, F drives, and if you wanted to create more you could have one of 4 as extended partition and create more logical partitions within it. It would be like C, D , E, Extended (F,G,H) say F,G,H are logical partitions within the extended primary partition

avinash goud
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    While the answer is technically correct, it would be nice to tell the user that in Linux, the primary partitions are sdX(1-4), so the extended partition would be one of (1-4), while any Logical partitions will only start from 5 onward. Also, that this is applicable to only disks partitioned under older MBR. Newer OS have GPT, under which Extended and Logical Partitions do not exist. – Domo N Car Sep 22 '19 at 15:55