From: davesurrey on
Long story but basically:

Installed a 250GB second HDD (hdb)
Partitioned the drive as 3 primaries and an extended partition (hdb4)
The extended partition (hdb4) then divided into 5 extended partitions all
with different linux distros on.

Only then did I realise that my (old) BIOS only recognised 137GB of the
disc.
So I reflashed the BIOS (my first time so that was "fun") and now it
recognised the full 250GB.

But...
I tried to add more extended partitions under hdb4 and Gparted won't do so
saying I have the full set of primary partitions.

Is there a way of expanding hdb4 so it uses all the remaining part of the
disc?

Cheers
Dave


From: Will Kemp on
davesurrey wrote:
> Long story but basically:
>
> Installed a 250GB second HDD (hdb)
> Partitioned the drive as 3 primaries and an extended partition (hdb4)
> The extended partition (hdb4) then divided into 5 extended partitions all
> with different linux distros on.
>
> Only then did I realise that my (old) BIOS only recognised 137GB of the
> disc.
> So I reflashed the BIOS (my first time so that was "fun") and now it
> recognised the full 250GB.
>
> But...
> I tried to add more extended partitions under hdb4 and Gparted won't do so
> saying I have the full set of primary partitions.
>
> Is there a way of expanding hdb4 so it uses all the remaining part of the
> disc?

gparted should do that for you.


--
http://SnapAndScribble.com
From: davesurrey on

"davesurrey" <dave(a)antispam.invalid> wrote in message
news:4857d32d$0$2477$da0feed9(a)news.zen.co.uk...
> Long story but basically:
>
> Installed a 250GB second HDD (hdb)
> Partitioned the drive as 3 primaries and an extended partition (hdb4)
> The extended partition (hdb4) then divided into 5 extended partitions all
> with different linux distros on.
>
> Only then did I realise that my (old) BIOS only recognised 137GB of the
> disc.
> So I reflashed the BIOS (my first time so that was "fun") and now it
> recognised the full 250GB.
>
> But...
> I tried to add more extended partitions under hdb4 and Gparted won't do so
> saying I have the full set of primary partitions.
>
> Is there a way of expanding hdb4 so it uses all the remaining part of the
> disc?
>
> Cheers
> Dave

Well just as soon as I wrote this I noticed that I could see in Nautilus one
of the drives under the extended partition, even though GParted was saying
they were all unmounted. So I used the cmd line to umount it and then was
able to expand the partition.
Sorry for this but at least this may be a headup to others to not always
trust GParted's reporting..although I have to say its been one of my most
faithful tools to date.
Dave


From: Jeff Gaines on
On 17/06/2008 in message <4857d32d$0$2477$da0feed9(a)news.zen.co.uk>
davesurrey wrote:

>Partitioned the drive as 3 primaries and an extended partition (hdb4)
>The extended partition (hdb4) then divided into 5 extended partitions all
>with different linux distros on.

Probably 5 logical drives on hdb4???

>I tried to add more extended partitions under hdb4 and Gparted won't do so
>saying I have the full set of primary partitions.
>
>Is there a way of expanding hdb4 so it uses all the remaining part of the
>disc?

I would use Partition Magic in Windows to expand the extended partition
(hdb4) so there is space for more logical drives. I don't know if similar
utilities exist for Linux but I'm sure they must.

--
Jeff Gaines Damerham Hampshire UK
There is absolutely no substitute for a genuine lack of preparation
From: davesurrey on

"Jeff Gaines" <jgaines_newsid(a)yahoo.co.uk> wrote in message
news:xn0frjk7nbd5o64002(a)news.individual.net...
> On 17/06/2008 in message <4857d32d$0$2477$da0feed9(a)news.zen.co.uk>
> davesurrey wrote:
>
>>Partitioned the drive as 3 primaries and an extended partition (hdb4)
>>The extended partition (hdb4) then divided into 5 extended partitions all
>>with different linux distros on.
>
> Probably 5 logical drives on hdb4???
>

Yes, that's what I should have said.. 5 logical not 5 extended partitions.

>>I tried to add more extended partitions under hdb4 and Gparted won't do so
>>saying I have the full set of primary partitions.
>>
>>Is there a way of expanding hdb4 so it uses all the remaining part of the
>>disc?
>
> I would use Partition Magic in Windows to expand the extended partition
> (hdb4) so there is space for more logical drives. I don't know if similar
> utilities exist for Linux but I'm sure they must.

Since my orig post I've fixed it with GParted which I guess is Linux's equiv
of Partition Magic.
Thanks anyway.
Dave