Primary or Logical?

Hi there,

This is my first post at the forums.

Is there any advantage in keeping the drive’s partitions Primary, even if one intends to install only a single OS?

Or should only one be Primary Active & the rest Logical vs Primary Active & Primary?

Hoping to hear from you,

Regards!

 

Just to add I am using DD suite 10 & use the Isolinux boot media to create partitions after a fresh install.

Thanks.

 

Well, given the premise that you will only have one OS, I'm not sure I see any. All I can add, which you may know, is that you can only have 4 primaries - unless you use a tool to give you an extended boot record capability like Boot It Next Generation. Of course, this is irrelevant given your stated intention.

In any event, I am subscribed in case someone else can tell you an advantage. In that case, we can both learn something.

 

Thanks for your thoughts.

The drive is HITACHI Travelstar 7K100 HTS721010G9SA00 (0A25016) 100GB 7200 RPM 8MB Cache 2.5" SATA 1.5Gb/s Notebook Hard Drive.

I plan partitioning as C: 60 GB Primary active for Vista, Office 2007, Service Packs & other utilities.

E: Primary/Logical for data, back images.

File system for both is NTFS.

Would creating a E partition as primary later have issues if one needs to resize , delete or merge it?

Would such changes affect MBR too?

Regards!

 

eDOC786:

Primary partitions are required when using Microsoft's boot method that's been in use since the days of DOS. If you use other boot managers then it is possible to boot operating systems that are installed to logical partitions.

There is a slight advantage to using primary partitions instead of logicals if you have the room for them. As you know, there are only four slots in a partition table and each primary partition occupies one slot. You can have an unlimited number of logical partitions in a logical partition container that will occupy only one slot in the partition table. The slight advantage is that if something goes wrong with the disk and one of the partitions becomes completely corrupted, if it is a primary partition then you only lose the one partition. If the corrupted partition is the one that contains the logical partition container then it is possible to lose all of the logical partitions at once. If nothing ever goes wrong with the disk then there is no advantage one way or the other for non-OS partitions.

With Disk Director you can easily convert a partition from primary to logical or vice-versa if you do it one way initially and later change your mind.

Considering everything in your first post, if you only plan on having two partitions then I would choose to make them both primary partitions, although it really doesn't matter that much whether your data partition is primary or logical.

 

Perhaps you know it already but, on a manufacturer stated capacity of 100GB, expect DD and Windows to show you total capacity of 100,000,000,000/1024/1024/1024 = 93.13 GB of capacity. So, you'll have 33.13 GB remaining after setting a true 60GB aside.

I'm very much in favor of putting your data on a partition separate from the partition with your OS for a number of reasons I won't ramble on about here. There are plenty of threads at Wilders discussing this practice.

HOWEVER, unless you mean only limited and frequent data backups, I don't consider having backups, especially OS images and especially on a laptop, on the same physical drive is a good idea. I understand if you are resource constrained but you may find a 2.5" portable USB drive large enough to hold one to several images of both of your laptop partitions a fairly cost effective solution and you can keep that tucked away safe and sound separate from the laptop. This is not a criticism of your plans per se, just my position based on my own experience.

No issues on resizing if you make second a primary.

By definition, how you partition will indeed effect the MBR, but only insofar as the data written in the MBR defining your partitions, their type and whether active or not. Here is some basic info on MBR: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Master_boot_record

Good luck.

 

Thanks for your thoughts.

The reason I got this drive was that approx 2 years ago when I bough this notebook it was amongst the first that had a 72K rpm drive & 100 GB was the max.

I have an external 250 GB WD drive.

1. Is 60 GB enough for Vista Office 2007 & utilities?

2. How could I change a Primary to Logical & vice versa, as one member suggested?

Hoping to hear your views,

Regards!

 

How can I do this...........With Disk Director you can easily convert a partition from primary to logical or vice-versa if you do it one way initially and later change your mind.

Regards!

 

Doc:

From the main window of Disk Director 10, right-click on the partition that you want to change:



Choose "Convert" from the "Advanced" menu and then select the desired choice. The illustration below shows how you would convert my primary E: partition to logical:

 

Mark thanks you are a GENIUS!

How do you take such great screen shots........MS Piant or Adobe PS Ext 4?

Regards!

Doc.

 

Doc:

I use the Snipping Tool that is built into Windows Vista and Windows 7 for screen shots.

 

Woh they are awesome just like your neurones..........

 

Although I don't use Vista (I use XP), I do use Office 2007 and quite a few other programs. My estimate would be that 60 GB is plenty, especially if you separate your data out onto the other 33 GB partition.

However, perhaps a member who uses Vista & Office 2007 can give you a more definitive answer.

BTW, my laptop started with a 100 GB harddrive also. Periodically (like twice a year), I would use DD to rebalance OS & data partitions so that each had roughly the same percentage of free space. Typically, I ran about a 70/30 split on that drive.

Recently, I replaced the 100 GB with a 320 GB. I use the extra space with FirstDefense-ISR to run Win 7 alternately and keep archive snapshots of each OS on board. In fact, I still have the 70/30 split on OS/data and then I have a 200 GB partition for archives & backup images. Again, though, I at copy all the archives and backups onto external drives at least every week or two.

 

60 GB is plenty for Vista & Office 2007. I use 40 GB for the main Vista partition and have about 15 GB free space currently, and I have several other programs also installed.