Logical or Primary?

[Marine]

I finally got my additional disks to work with the use of an Adaptec 1200a IDE RAID card and now have 240GB of storage. After the process of creating the array, I had the opportunity to partition, format and designate the new array.
So, I have one IDE array and I partitioned it evenly, 120GB into two, what I thought would be logical drives for storage. However, I must have been careless as I have created one logical and one primary partition. They both work fine and I'm moving data off my primary array onto these partitions.
But, which is best to have or faster or whatever? I guess if I wanted to I could install a different OS on the primary partition, but I don't want to do that. Should I make both just logical drives? Is there any danger in leaving one as a primary drive? Or should they both be primary drives?

My OS is on my SCSI array and I'm not going to add another OS on this machine, so 'm leaning toward deleting the primary drive and recreating it as a Logical drive. Is this the best thing to do? Bottom line: I'm looking for fast storage, not a drive to put another OS. Which is better, safer, logical drives or primary drives? Thanks!

 

[LiLithTecH]

You really only need 1 Primary Partition on a PC (generally the First disk - one that holds the OS)
Using the drives as logical drives makes it easier to add storage without upsetting the
Drive letter designations and having to reassign them.

 

[Marine]

As you know, with XP one can assign most any drive letter without problem. As I said, on this machine, I will have only one OS and that is on a completely different RAID array (SCSI). This IDE array is simply for fast storage. Do you recommend then, that I delete the primary partition on my storage array and rebuild it as a logical drive? Is there any advantage in speed or otherwise from making a drive logical or primary? I used to understand these things with only one partitioned drive in a box. With six or eight drives now arranged in RAID formations, it's a bit more challenging to assign duties. They will all be NTFS formatted, BTW. Logical all the way? Sounds like that's your advice. Thanks, dlk

 

[EeyoreX]

There is no performance difference whatsoever. It doesn't matter.

\Dan