primary and extended partitions

[flipdon]

what's the difference between the two?

i know the max you can have is 3 primary partitions, plus 23 extended partitions minus the number of CD/Zip/etc that you have. but what's the difference between having 3 primary partitions and having 1 primary & 2 extended partitions.

also, what should go on what kind of partition? should OS's only be installed on primarys for example?

 

[MCS]

The difference is the Primary partition can be made "Active", that is to say it can be made bootable from. You cannot boot from any other partitions.

Win9x absolutely has to reside on the Active primary partition (C, or what your PC believes to currently be C: (you can play around with hiding partitions and the like). Any NT based OS can be installed on any partition, as can Linux. Notice how if you dual boot 98/2000 for example, the PC still BOOTS from C: and then 2000 will load from D:.

Hope this helps.

 

[SUOrangeman]

PSST! Link below.

-SUO

 

[MCS]

Whoa...I have not idea why my C: came out out as a C smiley?????

Edit: Yes I do.... bracket, C, colon, bracket. Oh well.

 

[Zach]

You can have 4 primaries, one or more can be an extended.. each extended can have so many logicals..