Partition neatness and order question ?

[Ted Marshall]

> Date: Tue, 19 Jun 2007 12:34:37 -0400
> From: William Case <billlinux at rogers.com>
> Subject: Partition neatness and order question ?
> To: FEDORA List <fedora-list at redhat.com>
> Message-ID: <1182270878.3257.10.camel at CASE>
> Content-Type: text/plain
>
> Hi;
>
> Over the last 3 Fedora installs, I have managed to get my partition
> numbers out of sequence.
>
> parted /dev/sdb returns:
> Number  Start   End     Size    Type      File system  Flags
> 1      8225kB  41.1GB  41.1GB  extended               lba
> 5      8258kB  90.5MB  82.2MB  logical   ext3         boot
> 6      90.5MB  1349MB  1258MB  logical   linux-swap
> 7      1349MB  9739MB  8390MB  logical   ext3
> 8      9739MB  30.6GB  20.9GB  logical   ext3
> 9      30.6GB  41.1GB  10.5GB  logical   fat32
>
> Starting correctly with number 1 (sdb1) then jumps to 5 (sdb5).  How can
> I rename my partitions so that they go in sequence; sdb1, sdb2, ...
> sdb6.
>
> This is simply a neatness fetish; the numbering is not presently causing
> any problems to the actual opeation of F-7.  Am I best just to leave it
> alone, or is there a simple way or program that can re-number these
> partitions?
>
>
> -- 
> Regards Bill

This one's easy. xxx1 through xxx4 are reserved for primary/extended 
partitions.  All logical drives within the extended partitions use xxx5 and 
on, no matter how few primary partitions there are.  Your extended partition 
is probably sdb2.  The only way to get the partition numbering continuous is 
to use only primary partitions (sdb1 through sdb4) and then you're limited 
to 4 partitions, at least with standard partitioning.

Having said that, there should be no reason to worry about the partition 
numbers, except to made things "pretty".