Question on Extended Partition Representation in DD

I recently have been looking at the trial version of Disk Director. I noticed that the program does not specifically display the extended partition container on a disk, if present. If I missed something obvious, please let me know, but the only place that I could tell where such info may be gleaned is by going into Edit mode.

Of course, logical partitions defined within the extended partition are shown, so in most scenarios, one will know the boundaries of the extended partition. The following example is an exception.

I have a drive on one of my PCs with a couple of primary partitions, followed by a large extended partition. I was doing some unrelated testing which included placing a small logical partition at the end of the extended partition, leaving most of the extended partition as unallocated space (using a different partition manager). The last primary partition residing just before the extended partition originally ended where the extended partition began. However, I then made that last primary partition smaller, freeing space at the end of it and thus creating unallocated space outside the area defined by the extended partition but contiguous with it.

Disk Director shows the unallocated space between that primary partition and the logical partition at the end of the drive as one contiguous unallocated space, even though the first part of it is not within the extended partition. What happens when one wants to create a logical partition with DD that crosses the boundary between these two areas? Does DD perform this task successfully and transparently from the user's perspective, which I assume would include extending the beginning of the extended partition to include all the unallocated space? I may have tried to find out if not for the trial restrictions that support creation of only very small partitions. I do have True Image though, which provides the user the same view of the disk as DD, so I was thinking of restoring a backup partition to test this out, but I figured I'd get some feedback from the forum prior.

Thanks.

Doug

 

DD doesn't show the Extended Partition Container. This can cause some confusion when you look at it compared to Windows Disk Management.

DD will manage and move the container, unallocated space, etc. around as necessary. You don't have to do anything about the container.

Keep in mind that DD will allow you to "mix" primary and logical partitions. Windows Disk Management won't let you do this and also won't display the drive graphics correctly in this situation. So, if you use DD to "mix" your partitions, use DD to manage them instead of Disk Management.

 

Thanks for the feedback. Glad to hear that DD takes care of the extended partition container behind the scenes as opposed to not handling this type of scenario. I've gotten used to seeing it with the partitioning app I've been using for a while, but I wouldn't miss it. Need to move on to an app that supports Vista, thus my evaluation of DD. Windows Disk Management is way too limited.

Doug

 

Confirmed this behavior using ATI partition restore. I instructed ATI to place the restored partition such that it would have crossed the beginning of the extended partition, and the extended partition was stretched to fully encapsulate the new partition.

Doug

 

If you want to see a sample of what "mixing" looks like, read Post #14 in this thread.

 

Interesting. As I can't recall ever creating such a mixed distribution of partitions before, are most of the other popular standalone partitioning apps able to create and handle this kind of arrangement?

Thanks.

Doug

 

I don't know about any other partitioning programs since I haven't tested them. However, I think that some (or most) should handle it. If they didn't, you'd see the same messed up display that Disk Management shows. Most of the time these types of "mixing" come about from making partitioning changes on an already configured drive. When setting up a new drive, I think most people create the partitions in a more "normal" order.