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What's the difference between a primary partition and an extended?

Hang on, excuse me for being ignorant but which question are you asking?

What's the difference between a primary partition and an extended?
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or

Why bother with primaries when you're limited to 4?

Why not 1 extended and a bunch of logicals?
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the 2nd one makes no sense?!
 
Well, you need at least 1 primary for the OS, right? Shouldn't matter how you partition the rest of it; you're still going to basically have the same amount of disk space.
 
Well, you need at least 1 primary for the OS, right? Shouldn't matter how you partition the rest of it; you're still going to basically have the same amount of disk space.
Click to expand...

Sounds about right
 
Single-OS system configuration requires one primary partition for the OS.

Multiple-OS system would require one primary partition for each OS installed on the HD.

If an extended partition is created, it is also considered to be a primary partition (according to PartitionMagic).

Hope this helps!
 
Extended/Logical partitions SUCK... for the simple reason that you Cannot delete an Extended partition without killing all of the logical's. Why would you want to delete it? Well, it happens... sometimes you need to delete and recreate partitions for whatever reason. it's a royal pain to have to move data off of partitions you DON'T WANT TO DELETE just to do it.

You can have 4 primary partitions per hard drive. Unless you get crazy with partitions, there should be no reason to use extended....
 
If an extended partition is created, it is also considered to be a primary partition (according to PartitionMagic).
Click to expand...
If that's what PartitionMagic thinks than PartitionMagic is retarded. An extended partition is Not a primary partition. Microsoft doesn't see them that way.
 
Originally posted by: Whitedog
Extended/Logical partitions SUCK... for the simple reason that you Cannot delete an Extended partition without killing all of the logical's. Why would you want to delete it? Well, it happens... sometimes you need to delete and recreate partitions for whatever reason. it's a royal pain to have to move data off of partitions you DON'T WANT TO DELETE just to do it.

You can have 4 primary partitions per hard drive. Unless you get crazy with partitions, there should be no reason to use extended....
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Exactly. There is no reason to use extended unless you want more than 4 partitions per physical harddrive.
 
i may be wrong, but can you NOT install your OS on a logical extended partition? something about not being able to make it the active partition during boot up
 
I thought it was legacy stuff.

Dos only allowed 4 partitions per drive, you can use all 4 as primary or use a combination of primary and extended/logical drives. Primary partition is a bootable partition of the drive, extended allows for you to make a drive type that bypasses the limit of 4. The extended partition is just a space-marker (telling your os that new rules apply here) and it's the logical drives created in that partition that can go up to as many letters as the alphabet.
 
Originally posted by: ChefJoe
I thought it was legacy stuff.

Dos only allowed 4 partitions per drive, you can use all 4 as primary or use a combination of primary and extended/logical drives. Primary partition is a bootable partition of the drive, extended allows for you to make a drive type that bypasses the limit of 4. The extended partition is just a space-marker (telling your os that new rules apply here) and it's the logical drives created in that partition that can go up to as many letters as the alphabet.
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i think using fdisk under DOS, it only allows 2 partitions per drive.
 
Originally posted by: jjyiz28
Originally posted by: ChefJoe
I thought it was legacy stuff.

Dos only allowed 4 partitions per drive, you can use all 4 as primary or use a combination of primary and extended/logical drives. Primary partition is a bootable partition of the drive, extended allows for you to make a drive type that bypasses the limit of 4. The extended partition is just a space-marker (telling your os that new rules apply here) and it's the logical drives created in that partition that can go up to as many letters as the alphabet.
Click to expand...

i think using fdisk under DOS, it only allows 2 partitions per drive.
Click to expand...

Thats funny because I have 5 partitions on my drive which were done in...oh wait....fdisk. 😉
 
I think I've confused people, please read about extended partitions/logical drives being the dog's breakfast of partition types.

The partition table only allows 4 entries of primary and extended type partitions. The extended partition says "new rules, you can make more than 4 drives in here"... to use the extended partition, you need to create logical drives in that space.

My thought is that you can have setups like

4 primary
3 primary 1 extended (which only has useable drive space when you create the logical drives in it)
.....
4 extended (with logical drives from A-Z distributed throughout the extended partition)
 
Originally posted by: DannyBoy
Originally posted by: jjyiz28
Originally posted by: ChefJoe
I thought it was legacy stuff.

Dos only allowed 4 partitions per drive, you can use all 4 as primary or use a combination of primary and extended/logical drives. Primary partition is a bootable partition of the drive, extended allows for you to make a drive type that bypasses the limit of 4. The extended partition is just a space-marker (telling your os that new rules apply here) and it's the logical drives created in that partition that can go up to as many letters as the alphabet.
Click to expand...

i think using fdisk under DOS, it only allows 2 partitions per drive.
Click to expand...

Thats funny because I have 5 partitions on my drive which were done in...oh wait....fdisk. 😉
Click to expand...

you sure you're not running 1 primary and 1 extended, the extended split up into 4 logical drives?? that is still 2 partitions.
 
Originally posted by: jjyiz28
Originally posted by: DannyBoy
Originally posted by: jjyiz28
Originally posted by: ChefJoe
I thought it was legacy stuff.

Dos only allowed 4 partitions per drive, you can use all 4 as primary or use a combination of primary and extended/logical drives. Primary partition is a bootable partition of the drive, extended allows for you to make a drive type that bypasses the limit of 4. The extended partition is just a space-marker (telling your os that new rules apply here) and it's the logical drives created in that partition that can go up to as many letters as the alphabet.
Click to expand...

i think using fdisk under DOS, it only allows 2 partitions per drive.
Click to expand...

Thats funny because I have 5 partitions on my drive which were done in...oh wait....fdisk. 😉
Click to expand...

you sure you're not running 1 primary and 1 extended, the extended split up into 4 logical drives?? that is still 2 partitions.
Click to expand...

You didnt say 2 primary partitions, you said 2 partitions.

Yes Im running 5 logical partitions, 1 primary, 1 extended with 4 logical disks.

If you had said "i think using fdisk under DOS, it only allows 2 primary partitions per drive, I would of been curious myself because I dont know whether or not that is the case 😉
 
wow,
what a place to contribute my two bits worth of curiocity.
This is the question which has kept me awake many a night.The million pesos question ,HOW DO YOU GO ABOUT CREATING MORE THAN ONE PRIMARY DRIVES,using Fdisk.I have tried it and it doesnot allow more than one PRIMARY drives.It allows many logical drives on an extended drive but not more than one PRIMRIES.

Second question is WHAT IS THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN AN ACTIVE PARTITION AND A NORMAL ONE ? IS IT NECESSARY TO HAVE AN ACTIVE PARTITION BEFORE INSTALLING OS?

Any answers?
 
4 extended (with logical drives from A-Z distributed throughout the extended partition)
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You can only create one extended DOS partition. What would be the purpose of having more than one?

If you had said "i think using fdisk under DOS, it only allows 2 primary partitions per drive, I would of been curious myself because I dont know whether or not that is the case
Click to expand...

Fdisk only allows you to create 1 primary DOS partition.

HOW DO YOU GO ABOUT CREATING MORE THAN ONE PRIMARY DRIVES,using Fdisk
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You can't.

WHAT IS THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN AN ACTIVE PARTITION AND A NORMAL ONE ?
Click to expand...

At least one primary partition must be set to active to designate the boot partition.
 
fdisk is sooooooo old school.... Use Disk Manager to create/delete/format your partitions. Even if it's to install a 9(su)X install. It's so superior it isn't even funny. You can specify cluster size with a "click" 😉
Yes Im running 5 logical partitions, 1 primary, 1 extended with 4 logical disks.
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You are beyond confused DannyBoy. 😛
1 primary + 1 extended with 4 logicals = 5 logical partitions?

😀


 
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