How to migrate XP, Vista, Linux, BSD and Solaris to a bigger hard disk

[saikee]

teeitup,

The hard disk has a standard that every OS uses. One of the standard features is the 4 primary partitions. Basically you can have only more partition by giving up one primary and turn it into an extended partition.

Inside the extended partition, which is just a boundary, you can have 11 logical partitions (pre-2.6.28 kernel) or 59 logical partitions (post 2.6.28 kernel). The logical partitions must be consecutive because the ith partition carries the address for the i+1 partition. If you delete say the 7th partition the space is dead but the Linux will shift the 8th partition and above up by one space so that the old 8th becomes the new 7th, old 9th become the new 8th etc to maintain the consecutive order, even without telling you!

If you have space outside the above convention no operating system uses it. That is all.

Therefore in your case if you have dead space after the end of the logical partitions you can delete a couple of them and move the boundary of the extended partition to take up the dead space.

Dead space can be easily absorbed by primary partitions but it is more tricky with logical partitions because of the convention. There is a reason for it. If you study the convention you will agree that is the optimum way.