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Thread ID: 66623 2006-03-01 21:50:00 Setting up a Hard Drive geadmbc (8812) Press F1
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434925 2006-03-01 21:50:00 What is the difference between a Primary partition, Extended partition or a Logical Drive?

I assume that step 1 is to Partition the Drive then step 2 is to format the area that is partitioned.

With regard to the partitioning action for a second Hard Drive do I use the extended partition option or the Logical drive option or Both?
geadmbc (8812)
434926 2006-03-01 22:00:00 The primary partition is the first partition of the drive such as C:\
Each drive may only have one primary partition (you can have more if you use linux but that's another story)

When you add more partition they will be what's called logical partitions d,e,f etc. and they will be created inside a partition called the extented partition.

In simple terms a drive has two partitions. Primary and extended. All other partitions you created are held in extended.
apparition (3207)
434927 2006-03-01 22:25:00 thats how MS fdisk dos it. it dosn't neccarly apply to other partiition programs. eg is use randish and you don't make any extended partitions. none are primary, you can select which one you want to boot from. tweak'e (69)
434928 2006-03-01 22:35:00 You can have up to 4 primary partitions per hard drive, but only 1 active (bootable) partition. An extended partition is counted as a primary partition, but you have to further split it up into logical drives. Greven (91)
434929 2006-03-02 00:14:00 Thanks

That helps
geadmbc (8812)
434930 2006-03-02 09:57:00 You can find futher explanations on hard drive partitioning here - Partition (computing) (en.wikipedia.org) Jen (38)
434931 2006-03-02 22:16:00 The easy answer is: if in doubt choose primary partitions, unless you're a power user trying to accomplish some special task.

"How to use Disk Management to configure basic disks in Windows XP"
support.microsoft.com

"Multibooting with Windows XP: Introduction"
www.microsoft.com
kingdragonfly (309)
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