What's meaning of extra partitions on partion table?

[BRM]

> From: Abdullah Teke <abdullahteke at gmail.com>

>To: BRM <bm_witness at yahoo.com>; Kubuntu user technical support <kubuntu-users at lists.ubuntu.com> 
>Sent: Friday, February 1, 2013 1:19 PM
>Subject: Re: What's meaning of extra partitions on partion table?
>On Fri, Feb 1, 2013 at 5:41 PM, BRM <bm_witness at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>> From: Abdullah Teke <ateke.groups at gmail.com>
>>
>>>To: Kubuntu user technical support <kubuntu-users at lists.ubuntu.com>
>>>Sent: Friday, February 1, 2013 2:18 AM
>>>Subject: Re: What's meaning of extra partitions on partion table?
>>
>>>
>>>On Wed, Jan 30, 2013 at 5:03 PM, BRM <bm_witness at yahoo.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>> From: Abdullah Teke <ateke.groups at gmail.com>
>>>>
>>>>>To: Kubuntu user technical support <kubuntu-users at lists.ubuntu.com>
>>>>>Sent: Wednesday, January 30, 2013 9:32 AM
>>>>>Subject: What's meaning of extra partitions on partion table?
>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>Hi;
>>>>>I have kubuntu 12.10 installed on disk had three partition as you see below. Nowadays  i realized that there are two extra partitions on table. Is there anybody who have opinions for reason of this? Thank you.
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>       Name                      Flags                    Part Type             FS Type                             [Label]                        Size (MB)
>>>>> --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>>>>                                                            Pri/Log              Free Space                                                              1.05              *
>>>>>        sda1                      Boot                      Primary              ext4                                                                20971.52              *
>>>>>        sda2                                                Primary              swap                                                                 4294.97              *
>>>>>        sda3                                                Primary              ext4                                                               474840.31              *
>>>>>                                                            Pri/Log              Free Space                                                              0.03              *
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>They're not really extra partitions. It's free space left behind by aligning the partitions to certain boundaries - space you can't use.
>>>>It seems your first partition had to be offset by 1.05 MB from the beginning of the disk, and the last partition ends 0.03 MB before the end of the disk.
>>>>
>>>>Ben
>>>>
>>>
>>>Hi,
>>>Thank
>> you for response. But while i was installing i set up 3 partition for /
>> , /home and swap. After i used for a while i used to swapoff and swapon
>> commands and then saw the extra partitions. May swapoff and swapon
>>commands cause the situation?
>>>Thanks.
>>>
>>
>>No. It would have been done when the partitions were created. My guess is the limited partition program that is part of the installer application didn't show the details. I know for certain that if you use fdisk, sfdisk, or cfdisk directly that they will do exactly that - which is why I was aware of it.
>>Perhaps someone more familiar with the installer could confirm my suspicision?
>>
>>
>>Ben
>>
>>
>
>May it be possible reason  of disk damage. Because i ran fsck for disk check. 
>

Again, no. FSCK checks and corrects integrity of the file system. It has nothing to do  with the actual partitions and their placements at creation.


All the "free Space" lines mean is that the Parition Program decided to offset the partition by that amount when placing the partition, typically for improved performance by matching cylinder/head/sector boundaries. This is entirely normal, but will certainly change from disk to disk. I usually have extra space at the end of the disk for that reason; it's odd to see it at the start - which could mean the disk firmware detected some bad sectors in the first cylinder/head - but it is still entirely normal, and _nothing_ you do after creating the partition will affect these numbers aside from going back and making new partitions. All-in-all, unless you start seeing some rather poor performance from the disk, disk space shrinking dramatically, etc - it should be nothing to be worried about.


Ben