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Kobi T
Asked: 2016-10-03 07:04:27 +0800 CST

Help with understanding partitions role

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I'm using dual boot of windows 10 and Ubuntu 16.04.

Inspecting the partitions I have I noticed there are too many of them and I would like to understand what each one of them is for.

Gparted

Obviously, the first one is the boot partition. It's currently 500MB. Isn't it too much for boot files? (I'm using 240GB ssd drive and every MB counts)

About the next 3 partitions, I'm not sure what they are for. After that comes the Windows partition, then another unidentified one. The next ones are:

  • Shared space (110GB) I created for both OS's.
  • The Ubuntu's one and it's swap partition.
  • Recovery partition (It's a laptop, so it has one of those).

Any clarification will be appreciated.

dual-boot

2 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    • sda1 is the ESP (EFI System Partition). Do not confuse it with a /boot partition. The ESP is OS agnostic and required for any UEFI enabled computer with at least one OS in UEFI mode. It could be smaller but 500MB is quite common and the de facto standard among many major brands.

    • sda2 is manufacturer specific and holds the software to run diagnostics, often available from the UEFI menu and/or the one time boot menu.

    • sda3 is a Microsoft Reserved Partition (no comments).

    • sda4 is manufacturer specific and holds the recovery tools.

    • sda5 Windows (no comments).

    • sda6 is another recovery partition specific to Windows 10.

    • sda7 NTFS shared data partition.

    • sda8 Ubuntu /(root)

    • sda9 swap

    • sda10 Recovery partition - Holds the full recovery image intended to restore factory defaults.

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  2. Just to make sure I've addressed everything, I'll list them all, even the ones I think you know.

    • sda1 - This is your boot partition as you said.
    • sda2 - This is the manufacturer's partition (I believe), which includes some diagnostic tools that can be run before the OS starts, in case it can't.
    • sda3 - This is just a partition Windows makes to use when needed.
    • sda4 - Windows RE or Recovery Environment. It's basically a Windows installation disc and has the usual command prompt and recovery tools.
    • sda5 - Your actual Windows installation.
    • sda6 - From the flags on the partition, this appears to be another recovery or diagnostic partition.
    • sda7 - Your Downloads folder.
    • sda8 - Your Ubuntu installation.
    • sda9 - Linux Swap.
    • sda10 - This is probably installed by the manufacturer, and contains its tools to get Windows back up and running. (Google says it's a Dell backup utility.)

    500MB is definitely on the larger side of EFI partitions, but I think it's still correct. This decision would be up to the manufacturer in most cases. I'd say the smallest you want your EFI partition to be (especially with 2 OSes) is 200MB. You'd only be gaining 300MB by downsizing it, and then you'd have to move every single partition to fill that free space before getting to the one you want to resize. That's a lot of work for 300MB. It's not worth changing.

    I wouldn't touch any of this unless you're planning to erase everything and start over, because you don't know what might go wrong. Even completely getting rid of sda1, sda2 and sda6, you only get about 990MB back, which just isn't worth the effort.

    Depending on your laptop model, there might be a second SATA slot in it, where you can put in an HDD for data storage. If yours has that, you may want to consider buying a 1TB HDD.

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