Device Files and Partitions

Every partition and extended partition has its own device file. A naming convention for these files is in which a partition's number is appended after the name of the overall disk, with the convention in which 1-4 are primary partitions (regardless of the number of primary partitions which are available) and 5-8 are logical partitions (regardless of inside that primary partition they reside). For instance, /dev/hda1 is the first primary partition on the first IDE hard disk and /dev/sdb7 is the third comprehensive partition on the second SCSI hard disk.