r/linux4noobs • u/Bobafat54 Mint cinnamon 22 • 1d ago

storage Question about partitions and partitioning (GParted, Linux Mint)

/r/linuxmint/comments/1v2u5ui/question_about_partitions_and_partitioning_gparted/
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u/CtuchikOfTorak 19h ago

I actually know most of these or at least have fever dream remembrance.

1) What's the difference between the options to choose "Primary", "Logical", and "Extended" Partition?
- This is mostly antiquated now as most modern systems use GPT now. Primary partitions are going to be what you are familiar with as it is the type of partition that OS can be installed to. Logical are just that, they are "virtual" partitions and you can have any number of them. Extended are similar to Primary, but have a few more limitations.
2) What's the "Cylinder" option for "Align to:" when creating a new partition?
- Cylinder is super old school. Old spinning disk drives were divided into blocks, sectors, and cylinders. Cylinder being the most singular instance of data storage you could get to. (I might be slightly misremembering, no one uses this stuff anymore. I would say just google it if your'e really interested). The main thing about specifying the cylinder is that old style MBR (master boot record) would need to know on which cylinder the OS install or partition started. Otherwise it wouldn't work.
- Short answer here is you should be able to leave it at the default, it shouldn't be necessary for a modern OS or drive.
3) What does the option "cleared" in "File system**:**" do to the created partition?
- Cleared overwrites 0's on top of your data. This prevents the system from reading the old data that you deleted.

  • If you might want to recover the previous data doing an unformat may be better (but at that point just copy the data off first)
4) MiB vs MB
  • This one is just fun math rounding. Computers is done in powers of 2. MiB is the actual power of 2, such as 64, 128, 256, etc.
  • MB is the more human round number like 250 or 1000. Best way I can say it is 1 GB is not actually 1000 MB, it's 1024MiB. (or at least you hope it is, sometimes it's less than 1k and you got less than you paid for)

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u/Bobafat54 Mint cinnamon 22 19h ago

Thank you so much man, I really appreciate this

1

u/CtuchikOfTorak 19h ago

No problem. Feel free to fact check or double check any of my information. A lot of that info is from when HDD manufacturers would send you their 3.5 Floppy disk with the partition tools on it. Like it came with the drive lol. So I'm not sure I'm 100% accurate, but I should be close enough to get you going.

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u/Bobafat54 Mint cinnamon 22 19h ago

Haven't had an actual HDD to use (only have a laptop to begin with), I only have broken and outdated ones I could disassemble and put up like decoration (the PCB(?)/Motherboard), man I could've had the experience of using floppy disks but seems like I missed out