SATA format - Seagate Discwizard or Linux QTParted ?

[Greg Lewin]

Hi,

having fitted a new Seagate SATA disc I thought I'd
follow Seagate's directions and use their Disc Wizard
software to format it.

The intention is to have a multiboot machine, including
at least one (poss two) windows partitions, and several
other partitions for different lots of linux, other OSs
and data.

After using Disc Wizard to define and format 3
partitions which are all meant to be primary, I noted
that DW makes no mention at all of logical partitions.
I booted a live linux CD (Knoppix), ran QTParted, and
saw that only one of the DW-made partitions was primary
- the other two had been stuck into logical without DW
even saying so. So DW is rather limited in what it
does, even in "Advanced" mode.

So it looks to me as if I need to use QTParted (or one
of the other tools available) to define partitions, and
only do the actual formats as needed for and by each OS
to be installed, at install time.

Can anyone see any pitfalls in this approach? Any
tips/tricks/techniques you use please?

Of course this is not just about SATA, it applies to
all disks really.

Greg

 

[Mike Walsh]

The few times I have used such "wizards" they seemed to be dumbed down versions of DOS fdisk, which would explain only one primary partition. The advantage of this is any OS can recognize a partition created by fdisk. The disadvantage is a primary partition is needed for some things e.g. software RAID.

 

[Greg Lewin]

The few times I have used such "wizards" they seemed to be dumbed down versions of DOS fdisk, which would explain only one primary partition. The advantage of this is any OS can recognize a partition created by fdisk. The disadvantage is a primary partition is needed for some things e.g. software RAID.

I had a chat last night at my local LUG, and the
general view seemed to be that either cfdisk or plain
old fdisk would be quite enough - and that these fancy
ones are less trustworthy.

I incline to fdisk myself

Greg

 

[John Corliss]

Hi,

having fitted a new Seagate SATA disc I thought I'd follow Seagate's
directions and use their Disc Wizard software to format it.

The intention is to have a multiboot machine, including at least one
(poss two) windows partitions, and several other partitions for
different lots of linux, other OSs and data.

After using Disc Wizard to define and format 3 partitions which are all
meant to be primary, I noted that DW makes no mention at all of logical
partitions. I booted a live linux CD (Knoppix), ran QTParted, and saw
that only one of the DW-made partitions was primary - the other two had
been stuck into logical without DW even saying so. So DW is rather
limited in what it does, even in "Advanced" mode.

So it looks to me as if I need to use QTParted (or one of the other
tools available) to define partitions, and only do the actual formats as
needed for and by each OS to be installed, at install time.

Can anyone see any pitfalls in this approach? Any tips/tricks/techniques
you use please?

Of course this is not just about SATA, it applies to all disks really.

Seagate uses a disk overlay program to allow access to the full hard
drive capacity if your BIOS doesn't support it. Not sure, but my guess
is that the overlay program is proprietary. If you use another
partitioning program, you won't install that disk overlay.

 

[Greg Lewin]

John Corliss wrote:

....

I' ve used DDO in the past, but this is one of the new
mini-ITX boards (I'm going for Mips per watt these
days), and can handle the 250 GB.

1 TB here I come.

Greg