Raspberry Pi Forums

Evening all,

When formatting and mapping the linux OS image to the SD card, the SD card gets partitioned. What partitions are there and what do they do contain? If I were to use a 32gb SD card for example, how would it be split up with regard to where the OS goes, where data/programs can be stored?

Thankyou in advance for any replies.

If you take the Debian image, it writes to the card as if it was a 2gb card. It creates an 80meg FAT partition visable in Windows, a 1.something gig linux partition (ext4?), and a swap partition. The rest of your card will be left unpartitioned, and you can use tools like gparted to resize the linux partition or make further partitions.

You can use fsck to check the format.


pi@raspberrypi:~$ fsck -N /dev/mmcblk0p2
fsck from util-linux-ng 2.17.2
[/sbin/fsck.ext4 (1) -- /dev/mmcblk0p2] fsck.ext4 /dev/mmcblk0p2

Here is a guide to resizing partitions without loosing data after you copy the image over to your sd card:

http://www.howtoforge.com/linu.....titions_p2

So we have a 1gb partition for the linux install, which is all the files that the Debian/Fedore/Linux deployment needs to function, then we also have a swap partition which is essentially your page file space (any reccomendations on size of this or does it size itself to a default size?).

I am assuming when installed, size that you can write to yourself, like installing applications and stuff, is to the 1gb linux bit? Or does the partition appear as one partition exclusively for the linux install then another partition for the remaining space?

ThePunisher1024 said:


So we have a 1gb partition for the linux install, which is all the files that the Debian/Fedore/Linux deployment needs to function, then we also have a swap partition which is essentially your page file space (any reccomendations on size of this or does it size itself to a default size?).

I am assuming when installed, size that you can write to yourself, like installing applications and stuff, is to the 1gb linux bit? Or does the partition appear as one partition exclusively for the linux install then another partition for the remaining space?


With the default partitioning in place the amount of free space you have is the space leftover in the 1 GB or so  root "/"partition.  To be able to use the rest of the space on your SD card that's not included in the partition you either have to create additional partitions or resize your root partition.