Change Partition Order
======================

Author: Momchil Ivanov <momchil@xaxo.eu>
Date  : 2015.03.31

Introduction
------------

  This article describes how to change the partition order in the boot
  sector, i.e. to renumber partitions.

Using sfdisk
------------

  The disk where we want to change the partition order is /dev/sda. Execute

    # sfdisk -d /dev/sda > sda.old
    # cp sda.old sda.new

  The file sda.old looks like:

    # partition table of /dev/sda
    unit: sectors
    
    /dev/sda1 : start=     2048, size=   997376, Id=83, bootable
    /dev/sda2 : start=   999424, size= 67999744, Id=8e
    /dev/sda3 : start= 68999168, size=907771904, Id=8e
    /dev/sda4 : start=        0, size=        0, Id= 0

  Now to swap the order of the first and the second partition (sda1
  and sda2) edit the file sda.new to the following:

    # partition table of /dev/sda
    unit: sectors
    
    /dev/sda1 : start=   999424, size= 67999744, Id=8e
    /dev/sda2 : start=     2048, size=   997376, Id=83, bootable
    /dev/sda3 : start= 68999168, size=907771904, Id=8e
    /dev/sda4 : start=        0, size=        0, Id= 0

  To install the new partition table execute

    # sfdisk /dev/sda < sda.new

  or

    # sfdisk --no-reread -f /dev/sda < sda.new

  That's it.