No space for new partition on SATA drive, but 61GBfreespace

[Anders Karlsson]

* Nigel Henry <cave.dnb2m97pp at aliceadsl.fr> [20080731 19:24]:
> This is the first time that I've used SATA harddrives on this new machine that 
> I've built, so am a bit in the dark.
> 
> Fedora 8 is using sda1 for / , and sda2 for /home. sda3 is swap
> 
> sda4 (the 4th primary is the extended partition)
> 
> sda5, and 6, are / , and /home for another linux distro
> sda7, and 8, are / , and /home for another linux distro
> sda9, and 10, are / , and /home for yet another linux distro
> sda11, and 12, are / , and /home for another linux distro

So you have used up all four primary partitions available, making the
fourth the container for extended partitions. You've then proceeded to
allocate most of your 15 possible partitions.

> There is still showing 61020 MB of free space on the drive, but trying to 
> create a new partition for the install of Fedora 9, with 10000MB for / I get 
> the following output. Written in freehand.
> 
> Error Partitioning
> 
> ould not allocate requested partitions: Partitioning failed: Could not 
> allocate partitions as primary partitions. Not enough space left to create 
> partition for /.

Yeah, you're trying to create it as a primary partition, but you
already have used up all those slots.

> I'm sure I've seen some stuff about partition limits on SATA drives, but can't 
> remember where. If there are limits, are there any workarounds so that I can 
> use this 61+GB of freespace.

man fdisk

It'll tell you most of what you need to know.

> Thanks for any suggestions.

Create the partition as an extended partition, instead of primary partition.

HTH,

/Anders