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    Hard drive partitioning jargon help, please.

    Discussion in 'Windows OS and Software' started by inspirations365, Mar 6, 2009.

  1. inspirations365

    inspirations365 Notebook Consultant

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    So I know what a primary partition is.

    But what about an extended partition. Does extended = logical?

    Is there such a thing an extended primary partition?
     
    inspirations365, Mar 6, 2009
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  2. qhn

    qhn Notebook User

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    qhn, Mar 6, 2009
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  3. qhn

    qhn Notebook User

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    A small distinction that OS can start from Primary and not from Extended - there are other distinctions, so I am not sure that the "extended primary" term is valid in any senses.

    cheers ...
     
    qhn, Mar 6, 2009
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  4. Wishmaker

    Wishmaker BBQ Expert

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    Google never killed anyone.
     
    Wishmaker, Mar 6, 2009
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  5. Bog

    Bog Losing it...

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    Sure it has, you're just not using your imagination.
     
    Bog, Mar 6, 2009
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  6. bjcadstuff

    bjcadstuff Notebook Consultant

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    For your basic machine with one hard drive and one OS, you first set up a primary partition and load the OS onto it. Then you can set up part or all of the remainder of the drive as an extended partition. Within that partition you can set up 1 or more logical drives, each with its own drive letter.
     
    bjcadstuff, Mar 6, 2009
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  7. swarmer

    swarmer beep beep

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    The reason for having extended partitions is that a disk is limited to either 4 primary partitions or 3 primary + a group of extended partitions. So, extended partitions are really a way of working around the MFT's limit of 4 partitions.

    The extended partitions must all be arranged consecutively on the disk. This is because the group of extended partitions is really a primary partition which is itself partitioned to create the extended partitions.

    Actually, you may be able to boot Linux on an extended partition if you keep a bootloader on a primary partition and load it through the bootloader: http://www.linfo.org/logical_partition.html . But, as far as I know, Windows needs to boot from a primary partition. (Once booted, it can access the extended partitions fine though.)
     
    swarmer, Mar 7, 2009
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