There is a 99% probable explanation to this apparent confusion. Operating systems (and driver specs) allow four "primary" partitions on any one physical device. The wrinkle is that the last of those partitions may be defined as an "extended" partition. A user never uses an extended partition as such. It is a "container" for a series of logical partitions. Regardless of which "primary partition" (1,2,,3 or 4) is named to be "extended", logical partition numbers *_always_* start at 5. The output you received from an interactive session is somewhat different to what I received from a read-only run of fdisk with the command 'fdisk -l /dev/sda'. Note the definition of sda4. Try running the read-only command (it's also less dangerous), and see if you too find a definition of an extended partition: Disk /dev/sda: 500.1 GB, 500107862016 bytes 255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 60801 cylinders Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes Disk identifier: 0x0002c303 Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System /dev/sda1 1 1305 10482381 83 Linux /dev/sda2 1306 1560 2048287+ 82 Linux swap / Solaris /dev/sda3 * 1561 1573 104422+ 83 Linux /dev/sda4 1574 60801 475748910 5 Extended /dev/sda5 1574 2878 10482381 83 Linux /dev/sda6 2879 2891 104391 83 Linux /dev/sda7 2892 4196 10482381 83 Linux /dev/sda8 4197 4209 104391 83 Linux /dev/sda9 4210 5514 10482381 83 Linux /dev/sda10 5515 5527 104391 83 Linux /dev/sda11 5528 60801 443988373+ 83 Linux -- Bruce Miller Ottawa ON, Canada bruce [ at ] brmiller [ dot ] ca (613) 745-1151 This message is from a webmail login and not from my regular mail system. It does not have my customary digital signature. ----- Original Message ---- From: William Case <billlinux [ at ] rogers [ dot ] com> To: OCLUG Tech <linux [ at ] lists [ dot ] oclug [ dot ] on [ dot ] ca> Sent: Monday, June 9, 2008 10:33:18 PM Subject: [OCLUG-Tech] Partition renumbering ?? Hi; I want to renumber my partitions with fdisk -- I think -- but I would like to double check with someone before I blow everything up.