kumarkumar Posted December 24, 2006 Report Share Posted December 24, 2006 I have three hard disks with two partitions in one of them.I use WinXP Pro only.I want to know what are advantages or disadvantages in terms of performance of Windows if I format a particular partition as "primary" as opposed to "logical" Let me explain my question through two screenshots with two different cases (which are marked with red boundaries). This is about the particular partition H:. In Case 1 H: is formatted as Primary and in Case 2 H: is formatted as Logical.Case 1 (H: is Primary)Case 2 (H: is Logical)Now what I want to know is in what way is Case 1 advantageous over Case 2and vice versa?? Again by "advantage" I mean performance of Windows.Also you can see from the screenshot that Disk 2 and Disk 3 are set as active. How do I make them non-active without having to format them?? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jason.b.c Posted December 25, 2006 Report Share Posted December 25, 2006 Well since you have no replies to your thread i'll post one and it will be my christmas gift to you.... :lol: Now what I want to know is in what way is Case 1 advantageous over Case 2and vice versa?? Again by "advantage" I mean performance of Windows.Well as far as i know , you can only boot from a primary partition.. If i'm not wrong...( Click Here )Only one primary partition can be designated active (also call bootable).------- ----------- --------http://www.d-silence.com/feature.php?id=246This link explains that no "one" partition is really better or faster than another...I'd like to know if there are any significant differences/advantages/disadvantages of using Extended Partitions, other than the fact that Extended Partitions are not bootable and can have an infinite number of Logical Drives. I.e. my main concerns are Reliability (eg how well will it survive a crash or deal with bad sectors) and Peformance (is it faster than a Primary Partition?). Also, this is assuming I'm only using Basic Disks (not Dynamic Disks), they're formatted in NTFS, and none of them will be used as boot disks.I would have to agree.... :D Merry Christmas by the way.... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ɹəuəllıʍ ʇɐb Posted December 25, 2006 Report Share Posted December 25, 2006 Primary partitions are needed to install you operating systems; they are bootable.Logical partitions are just data partitions. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jason.b.c Posted December 25, 2006 Report Share Posted December 25, 2006 Primary partitions are needed to install you operating systems; they are bootable.Logical partitions are just data partitions.Yea , That's basicly what i said... :lol: Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ɹəuəllıʍ ʇɐb Posted December 25, 2006 Report Share Posted December 25, 2006 Now what I want to know is in what way is Case 1 advantageous over Case 2and vice versa?? Again by "advantage" I mean performance of Windows.To elaborate a little bit further, there is no advantage in having a primary partition if you have no intention of installing an OS into it. Have a look at my current layoutThis is of course a hopelessly cluttered system, but is so for historical reasons. It doesn't matter. I have2 HD2 primary partitions (English and Japanese Windows)2 extended partitions (1 on each HD)some 10 logical partitions inside these extended partitionsHow you should arrange your disks is how it suits you best. To be safe I would recommend that 1 HD should only be used for backup purposes. If you have important data on your computer, be sure to take regular backups; automated if possible.P.S. you can see that one of my boot partitions is hidden. This is because I use the BootMagic boot manager. If I'd use Windows' own boot manager, both boot partitions would be visible (but not active). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kumarkumar Posted December 25, 2006 Author Report Share Posted December 25, 2006 jason.b.c,Thanks a lot for your reply. Things are quite clear now.Merry Christmas to you.About the second question. How to I make the partitions in Disk 1 and Disk 2 inactive?? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kumarkumar Posted December 25, 2006 Author Report Share Posted December 25, 2006 Thanks to you too Pat Willener for explaining and taking the trouble to post a screenshot.I am putting my second question to you too. How to I make the partitions in Disk 1 and Disk 2 inactive?? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jason.b.c Posted December 25, 2006 Report Share Posted December 25, 2006 jason.b.c,Thanks a lot for your reply. Things are quite clear now.Merry Christmas to you.About the second question. How to I make the partitions in Disk 1 and Disk 2 inactive??Isn't there an option for that in your partitioning program..??? "Set inactive" -or- "non bootable"Just format them as " Logical " instead of " Primary " partitions..., It should be good to go ( i think ) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jason.b.c Posted December 25, 2006 Report Share Posted December 25, 2006 Just what ever you do , DO NOT reformat a partition with an operating system in it... : ) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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