Hi, Richard.
Most of my basic education in hard drives started with floppies on the
TRS-80. I started out knowing nothing about them, but that was in 1978, and
nobody else in town knew anything about them, either, so there was nobody to
ask. Trial and (mostly) error taught me a lot. The old SuperZap and such
utilities help me learn how to read a FAT and directory, byte by byte - even
bit by bit. I've spent days painfully editing corrupted floppy and hard
drives. Lightning from thunderstorms often scrambled boot tracks and
directories. I learned to mark the last several tracks on the HD disk as
Used or Bad so that the file system would not try to put any files there,
and then use Norton's DiskEdit or such to just bit-copy the first few tracks
there; after the disk's critical tracks got scrambled and it wouldn't boot,
I'd copy those tracks back to the front of the drive, and this often had it
running again in minutes.
When I switched to MS-DOS in the 1980s, I used the original Norton
Utilities, especially DiskEdit, and read the excellent user's manuals
thoroughly. The original (pre-Symantec) manuals for Partition Magic were
also quite instructive; I may still have some of those. Nowadays, I get the
Resource Kit for each successive Windows version. They have usually
included at least a detailed copy of the boot sector and the MBR, including
the partition table, with a bit-by-bit explanation of what the various flags
mean. But I've not found a good disk editor to work with the new file
system (NTFS and later), so my knowledge of the byte-level structure is not
keeping up with the new stuff. Other good references are the Inside Out
books by Ed Bott and others, but they don't show actual pictures of these
critical disk sectors. I've never been able to find and read an EBR
(Extended Boot Record) on my hard disk. The books say that these are
daisy-chained, so that each logical drive has an EBR that, among other
things, points to the next EBR - but I've not been able to find the start of
the daisy chain to start following the chain. Some day, when I get a round
tuit, I'll try again
The basic partition table has to be very simple because it's only big enough
for 4 entries and each entry is only 16 bytes. I've been using extended
partitions for over a decade. My standard arrangement for a HDD is a single
small primary partition to hold nothing but the startup files, with an
extended partition covering the rest of the drive, with multiple logical
drives. Those logical drives get created and deleted as my needs change. A
few volumes are reserved for my data (photos, finances, etc.). Most of the
logical drives hold Windows installations, mostly beta builds, of WinXP,
Vista and Win7, both x64 and x86 versions. When a new beta build arrives, I
just delete the volume holding the former build or reformat it to install
the new build. Since that volume doesn't hold either the system startup
files or my data, there is minimal disruption to my other volumes.
Sorry, I didn't mean to run on so, but I often do that. ;^{
RC
--
R. C. White, CPA
San Marcos, TX
Microsoft Windows MVP
Windows Live Mail 2009 (14.0.8064.0206) in Win7 Ultimate x64 RC 7100
"Richard Urban" <> wrote in message
news:#t#K#H3#...
> The best write up I have ever seen on partitioning came with Partition
> Magic 5 (I believe it was). Everything you always wanted to know (or maybe
> didn't) about drives and partitioning. The theory has not changed in many
> years. You can still have only 4 primary partitions and yes, an extended
> partition reduces that by one. An extended partition is a special type of
> primary partition that allows logical partitions to be created within.
>
> If you would like Mr. White, I will email you a .pdf of the manual. It is
> loaded with tons of useful information that is still relevant today.
>
> --
>
> Richard Urban
> Microsoft MVP
> Windows Desktop Experience
>
>
> "R. C. White" <> wrote in message
> news:e1qIMH1%...
>> Hi, Richard.
>>
>> The semantics here get tricky, don't they? :^{
>>
>> My understanding is that the extended partition IS a "partition", but not
>> a "primary partition". It can't be assigned a "drive" letter nor
>> formatted. But one or more logical drives may be created within the
>> extended partition and each of them can be assigned a letter and
>> formatted. So AricCougar's drives F, G and H are actually logical drives
>> within the one extended partition.
>>
>> And for even trickier semantics, I've suggested to AricCougar that he may
>> need to "extend his extended partition" to make room for still another
>> logical drive inside it.
>>
>> Methinks all this hard drive terminology just "growed like Topsy" and
>> today we are faced with multiple ambiguous definitions for "drive" and
>> "boot" and "extend"...and plenty of other words. :^{
>>
>> RC
>>
>> "Richard Urban" <> wrote in message
>> news:...
>>> The Vista setup tries to create a primary partition for itself to
>>> install upon. You can only have four - you already have four. The
>>> extended partition IS a primary partition.
>>>
>>> --
>>>
>>> Richard Urban
>>> Microsoft MVP
>>> Windows Desktop Experience
>>>
>>>
>>> "AricCougar" <> wrote in message
>>> news:...
>>>>
>>>> Partition Issue (Adding Vista x64 to Vista x32 1TB Drive)
>>>>
>>>> My 1TB drive is set up as follows:
>>>>
>>>> C: Vista x32 IE7 + VMwares 300GB (Primary)
>>>> D: Vista x32 IE8 50GB (Primary)
>>>> E: XP IE6 50GB (Primary)
>>>> F: XP IE7 50GB (Extended)
>>>> G: XP IE8 50GB (Extended)
>>>> H: Win7 IE8 50GB (Extended)
>>>> Unallocated 60GB
>>>>
>>>> I need to put a new Vista x64 in 50GB of the remaining Unallocated
>>>> space but keep getting this error when trying to partition/format it:
>>>> "Disk Management: You cannot create a volume in this unallocated space
>>>> because the disk already contains the maximum number of partitions."
>>>>
>>>> I understand that we only get 4 primary partitions. How can i add this
>>>> unallocated space to the Extended Partition, and thereby make a
>>>> partition within it to load Vista x64 to boot up like all the others?
>>>>
>>>> Appreciate any quick ideas. Thanks.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> --
>>>> AricCougar
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