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Question About Naming Of Partitions

mdiemer

Fri Aug 11, 2017 7:53:38 pm

Something that has been puzzling me: I have a computer with three hard drives. The original I keep unconnected. It has Windows 7 and Linux Lite. I have two connected drives, a WD and a Seagate. The WD has W7 and LXLE. The Seagate has Zorin and Ubuntu. Let's say I'm on Zorin. Now, when I run Disks, or Gparted, I see that these partitions are named, sda1, sdb2, etc. So far, no problem. But what if I am on LXLE? Will it name the partitions the same? What determines whether something is sda or sdb? Is it how the drives are connected to the computer? Or is it which OS you are on? I like to know for sure what is what, in case I am installing, reinstalling etc. So that I know exactly where to install. Or to change which OS boots automatically.

Thanks, Mike

Swarfendor437

Fri Aug 11, 2017 9:57:36 pm

I have always made an assumption that sda relates to the OS that is being run at the time but may not be so - to be sure, the best way is making one partition slightly larger than the other one and making a note of their sizes at point of creation - that way you will always no which OS is which. Will look this up to see what I can find though. ;) :D

Does this shed some light?:

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Grub2/Installing

mdiemer

Sat Aug 12, 2017 2:32:08 am

I always thought that, too. But from what I've been able to gather, it appears that this may be a fixed scheme. I have booted into my other distros, and they are all reporting the same scheme.

I have used the size of the install file in the past to help me, but it's always a little hairy when you're installing via the "do something else" option. you just hope like heck you picked the right one! I sometimes narrow it down though by unplugging all drives but the one I'm installing to.

MBMz10

Sat Aug 12, 2017 6:35:33 am

You must have been testing at same time I was as you discovered some of the same as myself and re-posted before I did but here is what I have found.

On my old (8-10 years) test rig with a Gigabyte MB, 5 x SATA ports, 2 x IDE, 1 x FDD (Floppy Disk Drive) port and using Linux Mint installed and for live sessions.

The first connected device starting from the first port number in BIOS was always sda, second was sdb etc
So if sata 1 has SSD 64GB Mint and sata 2 HDD 320GB has Mint also and I boot either of them they alwas showed up in 'Disks' the same way:
(sata 1) sda SSD 64GB
(sata 2) sdb HDD 320GB, regardless of wich one was the currently running system.

I added another drive (HDD 160GB) to various other ports for some tests and the same thing happened. Say I plug it into sata 4 and boot from it I would have:

sata 1 = sda SSD 64GB
sata 2 = sdb HDD 320GB
sata 4 = sdc HDD 160GB, currently running even though it is in port number 4, it did not become sdd. If I now plug in a USB drive it becomes sdd.

This was same if booting from installed OS's or if I booted from a Live USB. In which case the Live session USB takes the next letter after the internal drives.
So the first populated port, according to BIOS port numbering system becomes sda, second sdb etc, any unpopulated ports seem to be ignored by the operating system. As long as any removed drives are connected back to same port should be as it was before!

Any Partitions on these drives always showed up the same, sd*1 sd*2 sd*3 etc regardless if the drive was sda sdb sdc.

Bear in mind that this was on my Gigabyte MB and SATA ports, so your system and if using IDE may be different but these are the results I got for said system.

I have some more info and some tips but it was getting long and confusing enough already, if you want more info just ask and I'll post it here.

mdiemer

Sat Aug 12, 2017 7:16:42 pm

I have had the same drives connected to the same Sata ports for a long time. When I disconnect a drive, I do it at the drive, not the port, so no issues there. My system also has a Gigabyte MB. I'll continue to watch this, but it looks like all my distros are using the same category scheme. Which makes things a lot easier! It's still not a bad idea to disconnect all drives but the one you're installing to. Narrows down the possible choices to one or two. Unless you have more than two systems on a drive, which I try to avoid as it just gets too confusing. Sooner or later I'm bound to screw up, so limiting the possible error margin is a wise procedure, at least for me.