DD10 doesn't do Windows-type 'Extended Partiitions'?

Hello all

I'm totally new to Disk Director. A long time ago I was a user of PartitionMagic in conjunction with Win98 and - so far as I recall - PM emulated the Windows (M$, I suppose I should say) convention of using an extended partition as a container to hold a theoretically-unlimited number of logical partitions, thereby overcoming the limitation of any hard drive to not more than 4 primary partitions.

So far as I can see (after having examined the Manual and done a quick search of this forum), DD doesn't do this. Instead, apparently, to get more than 4 partitions you have to observe a limit of 3 Primary partitions and then, if more partitions are needed, NOT add a 4th Extended (ie Primary) partition but just go on adding logical partitions, using unallocated space as necessary.

For some reason (maybe my Windows/PartitionMagic background) I find this surprising/confusing. So I just wanted to make sure:-

1. have I got it right?
2. why does Acronis take this different approach?
3. am I the only one who finds it confusing?

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I'd like to hear an expert's explanation of this myself.

I have noticed that logical partitions created by DD are shown inside a "container" when viewed by Windows Disk Management Console, or Partition Magic, or GParted, or QtParted. However, a disk with logical partitions created by DD will generate an error when viewed with Partition Magic. I can't remember the exact text of the error message, but something about the extended partion not being marked as Extend-X. But the partitions created by DD work just fine.

Partition Magic seems to complain about something if any other partitioning tool was used to create the partitions. To me, it's overly fussy. Any of the other partitioning tools will accept each other's layouts without complaint.

 

The way I see this is that the extended partition created by DD is implicit withing DD's own partition viewer: it does create an extended partition to contain the logical ones, but Acronis decided not to display it.
The difference is that (seemingly) DD doesn't create empty extended partitions (unless there's a way i didn't find -- and frankly i didn't look for one), and once you delete the last logical partition it also deletes the empty extended partition.
Windows' DM and other linux partition managers don't seem to find anything wrong with DD's extended partition.

Why acronis keeps the extended partition as implicit, maybe it's to save novice users unecessary details.

As for PM complaining... wouldn't be the first time i've heard problems about PM handling things, though I can't judge myself since I've never used it. So from second hand information this might be a PM problem.