about logical partitions etc

[gBay]

hi all,
i partitioned and formatted my hard drive last night thanks to your excellent tutorials.
i followed the steps in the tutorial without knowing what any of the other options that dos(?) offered meant, eg logical drives (what are they?), extended drives, active drives and so on.
i've been looking round the internet and this site for some info about this, but to no avail.
could anyone point me in the right direction?
many thanks
- D

[dohray]

Hi gBay,

Have a peek at Partition Magics guide. (http://www.powerquest.com/support/primus/id286.cfm)

[cody580]

say you had 20gig hdd and you just wanted 1 partition on it you would partition it for the full value of the hdd and make it active you would have 1 drive your c drive for 20gig it would be your primary dos partition for your OS with a value of 20gig

say you wanted to break that 20gig into 3 partitions
c 5gig to put your OS on [your primary dos]
d 5gig to install your programs on [logical drive in your ext dos with a 5gig value]
e 10gig to save to[logical drive in your ext dos with a value of 10gig]

you would create a 5gig primary dos partition and make it active that would give 5gig primary dos partition your c drive with 15gig left to create your extended dos partition to create your other 2 drives whitch will be your logical drives in your extended dos partition in other words if you want more than 1 partition they have to be logical drives created in your extended dos partition

and by the way those numbers dont work out even like that now that i have got you thourely confused you can go to the site that dohray give you and get straightened out >cody

[gBay]

great guys,
thanks for replying, thats made it a lot clearer. i think i was getting confused because i heard you could have up to 4 primary partitions, though i could find no way to create more than 1 primary partition.
i set my machine up now to have 1 primary (for os) with 2 logical partitions in my exteneded partition (!)
i'm just trying to figure out what clusters are and how they have effect on my partitions.
many thanks
- G

[cody580]

a rule of thumb would be the smaller your partition the smaller the clusters and the more efficent the drive works i think there is a manuel way to change your cluster size but just accepting the default is prob the best way unless you want to get real deep into how a hdd works with very little benifit

what most people dont realize is you do not have to install your programs [aps] on the same partition as your os in fact it is better if you dont in case you have to reinstall you dont loose nothing
>cody

[gBay]

thanks for the tip cody! i'll install my aps one of the logical drives.
not sure what clusters are or what they do, leaving the default setting works for me!
- G

[cody580]

cody

[dohray]

Cheers cody!
You explained what I shied away from.
I have my OS (Operating System) on one partition, then my programmes on another and one called back-ups (My Documents and so forth) on another.
People really should keep their main OS seperate from anything else.