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#1
Are Primary Partitions Preferred?
Is it better to make all partitions on a disk primary partitions, even if they do not contain an operating system, i.e., they are data partitions? (Presuming that you don't need more than 4 partitions on a disk.)
This is the way I'm setup now - all my partitions are primary partitions - and it's based on something I read about two years ago. Of course, technology never stands still, so it may be that the original reason for doing this no longer applies. (Or possibly I misunderstood the advice I read. )
According to what I read: The starting and ending sectors of a primary partition are listed in the partition table, so these partitions are easy to find (and back up). The start and end sectors of a logical partition are stored in the previous and current logical partition. Logical partitions are then strung together in a chain, with the current logical partition pointing to the location of the next logical, etc.
This is not an issue until you have disk problems. Let's say, for example, that you have six logical partitions. Something happens on your disk to corrupt logical partition 3. The result is a corrupted logical 3 partition and an inability to find logical partitions 4, 5, and 6. They are still on the disk, but it may take forensic tools to recover them.
Is the above correct and, therefore, it is better to have primary partitions by default?