I wanted to divide into five partition my laptop hard drive

ok
my last problem solved.
i have:
partition 0 primary system reservoir 100mb
partition 1 primary 65gb (lettered c) and installed 7 on it

now i want to create 3 logical partitions:
d: 125gb
e: 125gb
f: 165gb

how must i do?
can i create logical partitions with diskmgmt.msc

very very thanks to you dear friend.
finally my problems with partitions solved by your helps.

Nice work.

Just to confirm: You were able to convert from Dynamic to Basic using PW boot disk v.4.2 with no problem?

hi dear friends
yes yes. i was able to convert from Dynamic to Basic using PW boot disk v.4.2 with no problem.

Hello Bare foot kid,
I am using Dell inspiron4050 installed with windows 7 home basic 64bit.
Right now i have 3 partition:
C drive-100GB
D drive(Recovery)-14GB
G drive-195GB
i need to divide G drive in to two drives of 100GB each. when i try shrinking. it displays a message stating dynamic disks are not supported by this operating system or server configuration.
Please help me in this regards

To create more than 4 partitions you need to use GPT (GUID Partitioning Tables). Windows 7 64-bit supports booting off these drives (or so I've heard, I haven't actually managed to get it working).

GPT supports up to 255 partitions I think (not sure on that one, but it's 100+ for sure). What Windows uses by default is MBR (Master Boot Record) which only supports 4 primary partitions and one extended (that one extended uses up one of the 4 primary).


(GUID stands for Globally Unique Identifier)




I'm not sure if you can make GPT drives using Windows however. The way I do it is I boot a Linux distro on USB and format the drive as GPT and create a partition. Then install on that, although, I'm not sure if that actually works for Windows.

*not sure if someone's suggested this yet*




Alternatively you should be able to make an extended partition and put multiple logical partitions inside that one (at least, I think so).

Anyways, I hope this helps.

Zukaro said:

To create more than 4 partitions you need to use GPT (GUID Partitioning Tables).

This information is inaccurate.

An MBR disk can support up to FOUR "PRIMARY" PARTITIONS. However if you want more than four "partitions" you can use one of those four primary partitions as an "extended partition", inside of which ANY NUMBER of "logical" partitions can be sub-defined. That would end up with a maximum of THREE "primary" partitions for real use, and ONE "primary" partitions re-purposed as the "extended partition" inside of which ANY NUMBER of "logical" partitions would live.

There are certain rules and regulations about what you can do with a "logical" partition (e.g. it CANNOT be specified as the "active" partition for the BIOS to boot directly to, although it CAN be specified as a "boot" partition for an operating system like some version of Windows, with Windows' Boot Manager) but for most uses it is perfectly acceptable. Certainly as an ordinary "data" partition it is 100% usable.

You can re-size, re-letter, create, etc., and do anything you want with a "logical" partition. You basically just cannot specify it as "active" as the primary bootable partition for the BIOS. But it can still be booted to if you put a Windows in it, though you have to get to it via standard Windows' boot-time Boot Manager which itself resides in the "primary+active" bootable partition on hard disk #1, gone to by the BIOS at machine boot time per the BIOS setup.

You do not HAVE to have even one true "primary" partition on a secondary data drive. If you want, the entire disk space could be allocated as an "extended partition" and thus the entire drive could be constructed to contain ANY NUMBER of "logical" partitions. The entire drive would consist of nothing but "logical" partitions... any number of them.

But on your primary hard drive, one of which is required for booting to Windows (or Windows' Boot Manager) obviously, you must have at least ONE "primary" partition so that it can be defined as "active" for the BIOS to boot to. It can be a regular bootable WinXP partition, the small "system reserved" partition for Win7 inside of which Boot Manager lives and which then in turn boots to the real Win7 system partition via Boot Manager menu, a slightly non-standard Win7 setup where Boot Manager and menu has been moved to the actual Win7 system partition and there is no small "system reserved" partition, etc., etc. So a minimum of ONE primary partition MUST exist on hard disk #1 as the BIOS sees things, and certainly that minimum of one primary partition MUST also be set as "active", where a bootable OS or Boot Manager MUST live. After that... you're pretty much on your own.

So on the first hard drive, there certainly must absolutely be at least ONE primary partition marked as "active" for the BIOS to boot to. But beyond that, ALL OF YOUR OTHER PARTITIONS CAN BE "LOGICAL", including one or more bootable Windows system partitions.

You don't truly need GPT disks, although if you want to have drives >2GB then you do. MBR supports up to 2TB, and up to 4 primary partitions (or up to 3 "primary" partitions plus 1 "extended partition" with any number of "logical" partitions inside of it).

What Windows uses by default is MBR (Master Boot Record) which only supports 4 primary partitions and one extended (that one extended uses up one of the 4 primary).

Again... inaccurate information.

An MBR disk supports up to four primary partitions, not five. An "extended partition" is actually one of those four allowed primary partitions repurposed to contain any number of "logical" partitions sub-defined inside of it.


So by thinking about what is really wanted, going with a standard MBR four-primary disk setup should work fine for virtually all needs. Just make one of those four primary partitions the "extended partition" and you can now sub-define any number of "logical" partitions inside of it.

You can use Partition Wizard to do all of this partition work. Reliable and dependable and easy-to-use.

Note that simply converting a partition from primary to logical, or even defining a new logical partition in currently unallocated space... these actions automatically imply the creation of that "extended partition" inside of which the logical partition you're defining is created.

In other words, the user doesn't really create the "extended partition". It's automatically created by virtue of the desire to create at least one logical partition. The "extended partition" is simply the surrounding disk space which incorporates all of the contiguous "logical" partitions you've defined inside of it.