Problems with Hard Drive Names

[OverLordTed]

I am having a problem with the assigned names of the hard drive...When I partitioned my hard drive it said that the first partition was hda1 the second hda5 and the third hda6. This comes to be a problem when following the intructions and seeing that they use hda2 and hda3. I assumed these were my hda 5 and 6 with different names. But then I looked in my /dev folder and came upon the fact that there are 5 names listed for hard drive:

hda
hda1
hda2
hda5
hda6

This thoroughly confused me. Could some1 please tell me if this is normal and if it isnt can some1 please assisst me in finding out how to change teh names of the partitions. Also, I was wondering if anyone knew which were primary adn which were the logical drives. And finnally could some1 let me know what the command is to completely format a hard disk.

Thank You in advance

[hhaamu]

The primary partitions are hda1-hda4. The logical partitions are hda5-hda64 (or something like that).

/dev/hda is your hard disk. /dev/hda1 is the partition you wanted to create as /dev/hda1. /dev/hda2 is the extended partition, where all your logical partitions reside (don't touch this one). You can't have any logical partitions without an extended partition (which takes one space in the primary partitions).

And no, you can't change the numbering of your partitions unless you change their physical position on the disk.

I hope someone else can explain this more clearly.

[hhaamu]

... And the command to format your hard disk is:

[OverLordTed]

Well now that I understand which hard drives are which should I still use hda3 and hda2 where it says to in the installation or should I replace it with hda5 and hda6?

[noff]

In the installation guide hda1 is /boot hda2 is swap hda3 is /
so in the instructions wherever hda1 is listed use what ever partition is your /boot partition.

If you are wiping the drive you will want to pay attention to the size guidelines listed when you make your new partitions. You may also want to add a /home partition to easy future reinstalls.
_________________
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[wuschel]

@hhaamu:
Why should he 'zero' his partitions?
I think, after partitioning mkfs is good enough, isn't it?

@OverLordTed:
It's not so important what partitions you create: hda1 or hda2 or hdax or some (described in chapter "6. Partition Configuration").
In chapter "7. Mount Partitions" you'll learn to mount the partitions in your host-linux-system.

If you use the partitions i.e. hda5 and hda6 you can mount them to your gentoo-dir and/or swap.
The commands for this case (example):
mount /dev/hda5 /mnt/gentoo
swapon /dev/hda6

wuschel

[hhaamu]