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From: Paul on 13 Jan 2010 04:59
Metspitzer wrote:
> On Tue, 12 Jan 2010 21:46:22 -0500, Bryce <none(a)invalid.invalid>
> wrote:
>
>> Metspitzer wrote:
>>
>>> I thought the primary partition was the partition you put
>>> the OS on. I am almost sure I created a primary and two
>>> secondary partitions on
>>> drive 0. That was a long time ago.
>>>
>>> I am trying to format drive 1. I made a primary partition
>>> of 175G and
>>> was going to make 3 175G secondary partitions. I made the
>>> second
>>> partition secondary and formatted it at 175G. Now I am
>>> working on the
>>> next. The only option I get is to format it primary. I
>>> am not sure this makes any difference, but I wondered why
>>> I can't make partitions 2-4 all secondary partitions?
>>>
>>> Here is a screen shot of my drives. XP
>>> http://i48.tinypic.com/x3c006.jpg
>> Windows (and DOS before that) must be installed on a primary
>> partition. A hard drive may have as many as four primary
>> partitions. One of these primary partitions can be
>> subdivided into secondary partitions. It's probably
>> possible to designate the entire primary partition as a
>> single secondary, but that seems of no advantage. Two or
>> more secondary partitions are more useful.
>>
>> If disk 1 is to serve only for data storage (no windows
>> operating system installed there), then create a single
>> primary partition using the entire disk and then subdivide
>> it into four secondary partitions. After setting up the
>> partitions, format each one and your done.
>>
>> Or plan ahead for a later install of windows o/s. Partition
>> the disk into two primary partitions. Subdivide the second
>> one into two or more secondaries. The first primary could
>> be used for data now and an o/s install later on.
>>
>> Bryce
>
> I plan to use the drive for data only. I have a poor understanding of
> what a partition and a logical drive is. I was hoping that if I had 4
> separate drive letters that a problem on one of the drives would not
> carry over to the others.
>
> I may be mistaken. Would there be an advantage in having partitions
> over logical drives to keep disk errors from spreading?
>
> Because I have such a poor understanding of what I am doing, I can't
> remember just what I did, but I think I tried making the whole drive a
> primary partition, and then divide it into parts, but XP wouldn't let
> me.
>
> I made primary partition of 175G and then a secondary partition that
> is 575G. I then split that 575G partition into 3-175G logical drives.
>
> Is there a better way to split up a 750G drive?

There is an article here, which might give you some background on
partitioning and why you might want to do it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disk_partitioning

An example might be, making a small OS partition, so that if
you are frequently running scans of just the OS itself for
viruses or malware, the scan may complete sooner. If you had a
1TB disk and a million files, an AV scan might take all week.

I partition my disks, to separate OSes. I have Windows, Linux,
Linux Swap, and a data partition, as an example of a partition
scheme. If it wasn't for my interest in booting other OSes,
I might have only one partition on the disk (I'm too lazy to
organize things more than that - I rely on the "find" command
to do my organizing for me - and I pick file names with
enough keywords in them, to be able to find things later.)
It is a PITA though, when doing an off-line scan of my C:
drive, to have all those extra files getting scanned as well.
(My C: drive has OS files and also some data files.)

Partitioning does separate the information stored, such that
a file system failure in one partition, might mean getting
to keep the data in other partitions. But it might be the
case, that the most danger to the user's data, comes from
the fragility of the physical aspects of the disk. And you'd
be more likely to just lose the entire disk, than to lose
only one file system. You can lose the MBR, which points to
the location of the rest of the partitions, so that would be
a common point of failure.

To experiment with primary versus an extended partition, I just
did an experiment in Virtual PC 2007. I have a Win2K machine
running there, and I added an extra empty virtual disk, to
pretend I was doing your partitioning experiment. (That way,
I didn't have to shut down the computer to add a spare disk.
I'm on dialup right now, so I can't afford to shut down.
My ADSL is dead right now.)

As usual (don't know why this happens), as soon as the new disk
shows up, Windows tries to make it Dynamic. I reverted it to
Basic, before doing anything to it.

Next, I assigned one Primary partition. The bar at the top
was colored dark blue.

Next, I made an "extended" one. That is the other choice you've got.
You can only have one extended area on the disk, and that will hold
all the logical partitions. There is room in the MBR, to hold three
primary partitions and one extended area that can hold a lot more
logical partitions. In the MBR, the extended area has a partition
entry with a special partition type number, which indicates the
partition contains a bunch of logical partitions. You allocate enough
total space, from day one, to hold all the logical partitions you
plan on making. The color of that space is light green.

Next, I right clicked the light green area, and was offered the option
to make a logical drive (logical partition). I picked a value which
didn't use all the green space. That left room for me to do it
again.

Next, I tried to make another Primary partition, and it was placed
after the green area. Some space is currently wasted at the end
of the green area.

Once I used up my one Extended and three Primaries, the Disk Manager
no longer had an option for new partitions in the "unallocated" space
at the end of the disk. But because I had some unallocated space
inside the light green "extended" one, I could continue to make
logical partitions in there.

This is what it ended up looking like. The extended area uses one entry
in the MBR. But the logical entries inside it, are chained together
like in a linked list. I can add more logicals as long as there is
some Light Green area left. Notice how my setup is now sub-optimal,
because I really need to move the Black space at the end of the disk,
into the Light Green area, so I can use it. So this experiment was
a bit of a flop. It makes more sense to put the Extended at the
end, so the Unallocated is all in one place.

Dark Blue Light Blue Light Blue Light Green Dark Blue Dark Blue Black
+-----------+------------------------------------+-----------+-----------+---------+
| Primary1 |<---------- Extended area --------->| Primary2 | Primary3 | unalloc |
| +-----------+----------+-------------+ | | |
| | Logical1 | Logical2 | Unallocated | | | |
+-----------+-----------+----------+-------------+-----------+-----------+---------+

Obviously, if you want more than four partitions, you'll need some
variation on the above example. But the reliability of the scheme (like
the area inside the Extended area), leaves a bit to be desired. If one
of the Logical partitions in the middle of the Extended area becomes
unhooked, the logical ones further to the right might disappear as well.

I use only Primary partitions myself (because I understand them a little
bit better than the logical ones). When one of my Linux distros offered
to mess about like that (use a logical partition), I had to slap it around
a bit and manually partition the way I wanted. So there is some software
that will take it upon itself, to do stuff like that. And once done, then
later you have to figure out how to manipulate them. Sort of like the
mess Windows makes, by generously offering to make a disk "Dynamic" for
no good reason :-)

The MBR is the first sector on your disk, and it is to the left of the
above diagram. It has room for four pointers, and in my example I
stored pointers to three Primary entries and one Extended entry. You can
see a picture of the data in the MBR, in this picture. Losing the MBR
is a disaster, but you can use TestDisk to rebuild the table.

http://www.vistax64.com/attachments/vista-installation-setup/7308d1224108918-hidden-partiton-recovery-dell-xps-420-dell-tbl.gif

HTH,
Paul
From: Don Phillipson on 13 Jan 2010 07:58
"Metspitzer" <kilowatt(a)charter.net> wrote in message
news:j3rqk5p3fk8elm913qjk61bm1iod4uug8v(a)4ax.com...

> >> I am trying to format drive 1. I made a primary partition
> >> of 175G and
> >> was going to make 3 175G secondary partitions. I made the
> >> second
> >> partition secondary and formatted it at 175G. Now I am
> >> working on the
> >> next. The only option I get is to format it primary. I
> >> am not sure this makes any difference, but I wondered why
> >> I can't make partitions 2-4 all secondary partitions?
.. . .
> I plan to use the drive for data only. I have a poor understanding of
> what a partition and a logical drive is. I was hoping that if I had 4
> separate drive letters that a problem on one of the drives would not
> carry over to the others.
>
> I may be mistaken. Would there be an advantage in having partitions
> over logical drives to keep disk errors from spreading?
>
> Because I have such a poor understanding of what I am doing, I can't
> remember just what I did, but I think I tried making the whole drive a
> primary partition, and then divide it into parts, but XP wouldn't let me.

The MS KB is a good place to start e.g.
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/313348 Then:
1. As you read, look out for the standard tech language
and use it. E.g. booting drives are partitioned Primary DOS;
non-booting drives Logical Drives set up within an Extended
DOS partition.
2. If new to this, and making changes, write down with
pencil and paper what you do.
3. After drives have been created (which assigns them
drive letters C, D, E and so on) each one must be FORMATted
before WinXP can use them. This is when you choose
between FAT32 and NTFS format (preferred for XP.)

--
Don Phillipson
Carlsbad Springs
(Ottawa, Canada)


From: Bryce on 13 Jan 2010 08:46
Metspitzer wrote:
(snip)
> I plan to use the drive for data only. I have a poor
> understanding of what a partition and a logical drive is.
> I was hoping that if I had 4 separate drive letters that a
> problem on one of the drives would not carry over to the
> others.
>
> I may be mistaken. Would there be an advantage in having
> partitions over logical drives to keep disk errors from
> spreading?
(snip)
>
> I made primary partition of 175G and then a secondary
> partition that is 575G. I then split that 575G partition
> into 3-175G logical drives.
>
> Is there a better way to split up a 750G drive?

Suppose you own a huge chunk of land and decide to raise
sheep. If you enclose the entire property in one fence, you
will spend lots of time tracking down your critters. Adding
more fence to partition the land helps manage the herd. So
it is as well with your hard drive. Partitioning may limit
damage caused by software. It will certainly save a lot of
time when doing scans and disk maintenance ... like
defragmentation.

The partitioning you describe sounds OK. I haven't used MS
products since win2k, so I'll leave the detailed how-to's to
others. There's lots to learn. It will take time and some
stubbed toes along the way. Hang in there.

Bryce
From: Flasherly on 13 Jan 2010 09:39
On Jan 13, 1:54 am, Metspitzer <kilow...(a)charter.net> wrote:
>
> I plan to use the drive for data only. I have a poor understanding of
> what a partition and a logical drive is.

A disc can have 4 primary partitions.

Each of the partitions can be assigned logical drives, up to the
letters in the alphabet (26).

That's the job of partitioning software.

The job of "arbitrating" partitions - becomes one of the OS. In a
sense...

A dedicated 3-rd party manager will also do the arbitrating, and
sometimes quite a bit more.

The definition of doing the job of arbitration is very simple --
without it, you don't boot.
From: Metspitzer on 13 Jan 2010 12:38
On Wed, 13 Jan 2010 04:59:20 -0500, Paul <nospam(a)needed.com> wrote:

>Metspitzer wrote:
>> On Tue, 12 Jan 2010 21:46:22 -0500, Bryce <none(a)invalid.invalid>
>> wrote:
>>
>>> Metspitzer wrote:
>>>
>>>> I thought the primary partition was the partition you put
>>>> the OS on. I am almost sure I created a primary and two
>>>> secondary partitions on
>>>> drive 0. That was a long time ago.
>>>>
>>>> I am trying to format drive 1. I made a primary partition
>>>> of 175G and
>>>> was going to make 3 175G secondary partitions. I made the
>>>> second
>>>> partition secondary and formatted it at 175G. Now I am
>>>> working on the
>>>> next. The only option I get is to format it primary. I
>>>> am not sure this makes any difference, but I wondered why
>>>> I can't make partitions 2-4 all secondary partitions?
>>>>
>>>> Here is a screen shot of my drives. XP
>>>> http://i48.tinypic.com/x3c006.jpg
>>> Windows (and DOS before that) must be installed on a primary
>>> partition. A hard drive may have as many as four primary
>>> partitions. One of these primary partitions can be
>>> subdivided into secondary partitions. It's probably
>>> possible to designate the entire primary partition as a
>>> single secondary, but that seems of no advantage. Two or
>>> more secondary partitions are more useful.
>>>
>>> If disk 1 is to serve only for data storage (no windows
>>> operating system installed there), then create a single
>>> primary partition using the entire disk and then subdivide
>>> it into four secondary partitions. After setting up the
>>> partitions, format each one and your done.
>>>
>>> Or plan ahead for a later install of windows o/s. Partition
>>> the disk into two primary partitions. Subdivide the second
>>> one into two or more secondaries. The first primary could
>>> be used for data now and an o/s install later on.
>>>
>>> Bryce
>>
>> I plan to use the drive for data only. I have a poor understanding of
>> what a partition and a logical drive is. I was hoping that if I had 4
>> separate drive letters that a problem on one of the drives would not
>> carry over to the others.
>>
>> I may be mistaken. Would there be an advantage in having partitions
>> over logical drives to keep disk errors from spreading?
>>
>> Because I have such a poor understanding of what I am doing, I can't
>> remember just what I did, but I think I tried making the whole drive a
>> primary partition, and then divide it into parts, but XP wouldn't let
>> me.
>>
>> I made primary partition of 175G and then a secondary partition that
>> is 575G. I then split that 575G partition into 3-175G logical drives.
>>
>> Is there a better way to split up a 750G drive?
>
>There is an article here, which might give you some background on
>partitioning and why you might want to do it.
>
>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disk_partitioning
>
>An example might be, making a small OS partition, so that if
>you are frequently running scans of just the OS itself for
>viruses or malware, the scan may complete sooner. If you had a
>1TB disk and a million files, an AV scan might take all week.
>
>I partition my disks, to separate OSes. I have Windows, Linux,
>Linux Swap, and a data partition, as an example of a partition
>scheme. If it wasn't for my interest in booting other OSes,
>I might have only one partition on the disk (I'm too lazy to
>organize things more than that - I rely on the "find" command
>to do my organizing for me - and I pick file names with
>enough keywords in them, to be able to find things later.)
>It is a PITA though, when doing an off-line scan of my C:
>drive, to have all those extra files getting scanned as well.
>(My C: drive has OS files and also some data files.)
>
>Partitioning does separate the information stored, such that
>a file system failure in one partition, might mean getting
>to keep the data in other partitions. But it might be the
>case, that the most danger to the user's data, comes from
>the fragility of the physical aspects of the disk. And you'd
>be more likely to just lose the entire disk, than to lose
>only one file system. You can lose the MBR, which points to
>the location of the rest of the partitions, so that would be
>a common point of failure.
>
>To experiment with primary versus an extended partition, I just
>did an experiment in Virtual PC 2007. I have a Win2K machine
>running there, and I added an extra empty virtual disk, to
>pretend I was doing your partitioning experiment. (That way,
>I didn't have to shut down the computer to add a spare disk.
>I'm on dialup right now, so I can't afford to shut down.
>My ADSL is dead right now.)
>
>As usual (don't know why this happens), as soon as the new disk
>shows up, Windows tries to make it Dynamic. I reverted it to
>Basic, before doing anything to it.
>
>Next, I assigned one Primary partition. The bar at the top
>was colored dark blue.
>
>Next, I made an "extended" one. That is the other choice you've got.
>You can only have one extended area on the disk, and that will hold
>all the logical partitions. There is room in the MBR, to hold three
>primary partitions and one extended area that can hold a lot more
>logical partitions. In the MBR, the extended area has a partition
>entry with a special partition type number, which indicates the
>partition contains a bunch of logical partitions. You allocate enough
>total space, from day one, to hold all the logical partitions you
>plan on making. The color of that space is light green.
>
>Next, I right clicked the light green area, and was offered the option
>to make a logical drive (logical partition). I picked a value which
>didn't use all the green space. That left room for me to do it
>again.
>
>Next, I tried to make another Primary partition, and it was placed
>after the green area. Some space is currently wasted at the end
>of the green area.
>
>Once I used up my one Extended and three Primaries, the Disk Manager
>no longer had an option for new partitions in the "unallocated" space
>at the end of the disk. But because I had some unallocated space
>inside the light green "extended" one, I could continue to make
>logical partitions in there.
>
>This is what it ended up looking like. The extended area uses one entry
>in the MBR. But the logical entries inside it, are chained together
>like in a linked list. I can add more logicals as long as there is
>some Light Green area left. Notice how my setup is now sub-optimal,
>because I really need to move the Black space at the end of the disk,
>into the Light Green area, so I can use it. So this experiment was
>a bit of a flop. It makes more sense to put the Extended at the
>end, so the Unallocated is all in one place.
>
>Dark Blue Light Blue Light Blue Light Green Dark Blue Dark Blue Black
>+-----------+------------------------------------+-----------+-----------+---------+
>| Primary1 |<---------- Extended area --------->| Primary2 | Primary3 | unalloc |
>| +-----------+----------+-------------+ | | |
>| | Logical1 | Logical2 | Unallocated | | | |
>+-----------+-----------+----------+-------------+-----------+-----------+---------+
>
>Obviously, if you want more than four partitions, you'll need some
>variation on the above example. But the reliability of the scheme (like
>the area inside the Extended area), leaves a bit to be desired. If one
>of the Logical partitions in the middle of the Extended area becomes
>unhooked, the logical ones further to the right might disappear as well.
>
>I use only Primary partitions myself (because I understand them a little
>bit better than the logical ones). When one of my Linux distros offered
>to mess about like that (use a logical partition), I had to slap it around
>a bit and manually partition the way I wanted. So there is some software
>that will take it upon itself, to do stuff like that. And once done, then
>later you have to figure out how to manipulate them. Sort of like the
>mess Windows makes, by generously offering to make a disk "Dynamic" for
>no good reason :-)
>
>The MBR is the first sector on your disk, and it is to the left of the
>above diagram. It has room for four pointers, and in my example I
>stored pointers to three Primary entries and one Extended entry. You can
>see a picture of the data in the MBR, in this picture. Losing the MBR
>is a disaster, but you can use TestDisk to rebuild the table.
>
>http://www.vistax64.com/attachments/vista-installation-setup/7308d1224108918-hidden-partiton-recovery-dell-xps-420-dell-tbl.gif
>
>HTH,
> Paul
Thanks for your very helpful explanation
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