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Thread ID: 85028 2007-11-27 02:12:00 C drive showing as a logical drive and D as Primary Neil McC (178) Press F1
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615562 2007-11-27 02:12:00 in Acronis Disc Director.(and True Image).
Any ideas on what might happen if I select to reverse these settings,(with ADD) as I understand that the primary is the one to boot off?
This is how it came to me from the builder 2 years ago.I'm aiming to make a clone of the drive as a backup,seeing how I've just had to install a new drive for a friend.Luckily I had made an image of her drive a few weeks ago, so she just lost some emails.
I've already done a clone onto a new 320G drive, which reminded me that the partitions are aaf.
Thanks.
Neil McC (178)
615563 2007-11-27 02:53:00 The "primary" and "logical" descriptions are indications of the type of partitions you have . You can have only four partitions on a physical disk, either "primary" or "extended" . A primary partition is a single "disk" .

Extended partitions were "invented" because physical disk capacities grew faster than DOS's ability to handle them . ;) An extended partition can contain a number of logical partitions, each of which is a "disk" .


If you do fdisk /status you should see that the C "disk" is marked as "bootable" . That is what determines which "disk" is booted from (or where a boot manager is to be found) .
Graham L (2)
615564 2007-11-27 04:58:00 Thanks Graham.
Acronis Disk Director is showing on my first drive....

Disk 1
Unallocated 7MB
NTFS(C) 55GB........................coloured as a logical partition
Local disc (D) Pri,Act. 98GB....coloured as a primary partition

Disk 2
First E (E).....Pri,Act. 232GB...............coloured as a primary partition

So I'm assuming that C drive is an extended partition containing a logical partition?

The main thing I want to know is if I do a clone of the present setup to another drive will it still work ok?
I know, try it and see!! Trouble is I like things to be as they should be!!
Not sure how to do an fdisk/status.:confused: Looks a little dangerous!
Neil McC (178)
615565 2007-11-29 02:13:00 fdisk /status is the safest way to run fdisk from the command line . It doesn't want any keyboard input . It just shows the disk status .

Your "C disk" is the only logical drive in an extended partition .

It's unnecessary for it to be in an extended partition, but that doesn't do any harm, either . The information in the partition table is looked at once by the boot code in the BIOS, then onvcce by the OS which needs to know ehere "disks" are .

A clone should be exactly the same . ;)
Graham L (2)
615566 2007-11-29 03:27:00 Thanks Graham,I'll sleep better now:D
Have a friend who swears black and blue that C/boot drive can only be on a primary partition.
Still trying to work out how to do the fdisk /status on my XP.Just had a look on Google and this post is shown there.Scary.
Thanks again.
Neil McC (178)
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