Question about cloning

[Lex24]

redplanet: Found there was a max of 4 partitions...

If you are talking about MBR partition structure then the statement above is incorrect. Four is the maximum number of primary partitions. You can have:

4 primary
3 primary + 1 extended
2 primary + 1 extended
1 primary + 1 extended
1 extended only (ok for a second, non-bootable disk)

The extended partition can contain many logical partitions, the exact limit depends on your hardware, it can be a hundred or more.

You don't need 75 GB for LL. This is not Windows 7 or 10, Linux won't keep growing in size out-of-control. My LL v2.8 keeps steady at around 4.5 GB and never grows above 5 GB. LL v3.nn might be a bit larger but not by much. Here are the update commands that should keep the size fixed:

Code:

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get dist-upgrade
sudo apt-get autoremove
sudo apt-get autoclean

You can easily have Windows 7 and ten different Linux distros installed on 250 GB drive. Here is an example:

# one primary partition
/dev/sda1 - 60 GB - Windows 7
# twelve logical partitions (contained in the extended partition)
/dev/sda5 - 15 GB - LL
/dev/sda6 - 15 GB - Xubuntu
/dev/sda7 - 15 GB - Arch
...
/dev/sda14 - 15 GB - some other distro
/dev/sda15 - 20 GB - data files
/dev/sda16 - 15 GB - temp files (ISO files, etc)
/dev/sda17 -  5 GB - Linux swap partition
-----
Total: 250 GB

Just google "MBR primary extended partition" to learn  more.