External USB HDD changed from NTFS to RAW

After you have finished backing up all the data in the Music, ebooks and MY-DATA partitions:

We shall a) make the 32GB + 472.3GB unallaocated into one single partition, b) make the Music, ebooks and MY-DATA partitions Primary ( no need for those to be logical volumes in the extended partition) and then examine how the drive looks in Windows Disk Management.

Process:

Safely Remove all external HDDs and Flash drives from your PC.

Reboot your PC for a clean start and plug in only the problem drive.

1. Launch Partition Wizard and right click on the 32GB partition and click on "Extend" in the menu. Take Free Space from: 472.3GB Unallocated. How much space do you want to take? : Move the slider to the right end (maximum size) and Click on "OK"

2. Right click on the Music Partition and in the Menu click on "Set Partition as Primary"

3 and 4: Repeat the same for the ebooks and MY-DATA partitions

Now 4 operations are pending. Click on APPLY in the top Menu Bar and keep twiddling your fingers till it executes all pending operations.

Huff! Now Partition Wizard will show 4 full Primary partitions. You can right click on the first partition and explore. Whatever you see there is what you will get finally.

( Remember this will write four new partition tables in sector 0 and four new volume boot records at the start sector of each partition and therefore the screenshots you put in your post #29 are no longer valid :) )

Close Partition Wizard and reboot your PC after safely removing the external drive.

After booting, plug in your external drive again and view the external drive in Windows Disk Management . Is the first partition still showing as RAW? Then

Run check disk from command prompt.

Open Command prompt. Start > All programs > Accessories > Command Prompt

Type
CHKDSK K: /f /v /r /x Press enter. Note: Replace K: with the actual drive letter of the RAW partition.Also note before every switch/option there is a space.

Allow check disk to complete. ( You should not abort checkdisk midway for any reason.)

After checkdisk completes does that partition show as NTFS and accessible? You only have to tell :)

Q: Should I do a chkdsk on these individual partitions to insure they are error-free?

Not necessary. If errors are found Windows itself will ask you/run checkdisk. However there is no bar if you want to run checkdisk for peace of mind. Go to Drive Properties > Tools > Check now. Easy way. Sufficient.



Q: When utilizing a HDD or SSD as a storage device only, such as this drive, is it always best to use Primary drives?

It is immaterial whether a particular MBR disk ( be it HDD or SSD) is a system disk or data disk. Sector 0 in which the partition tables reside has only 64 bytes space assigned to it. Each partition table is 16 byte in length. So only four partition tables (4x16 bytes) can be accomodated. So an MBR disk can only have four partitions and these four are known as Primary partitions. If you do not want more than four partitions, then keep them so. This is how the MBR structure was designed and defined in the first place. See my post #7 here Disk Mgmt ask to initialize a drive that isn't there. - Windows 7 Help Forums

When the need for more partitions arose with increasing hard drive capacity, then the fourth primary partition was made into an extended partition into which logical partitions can be defined. The number of logical drives one can have in a disk is only limited by the number of alphabets (drive letters) left.

If all this sounds greek and latin it is sufficient for one to know that on an MBR drive can have four primary partitions or three primary and 20 or so logical partitions.

Q: When you assign a Drive letter to physical partitions, does it cause problems when attaching to a computer that already has that drive letter assigned? Seems like I did have some issues with this as I had the "ebooks" drive as E: and my computers can often have their drives or devices already assigned to E:

Drive letters on a PC are assigned dynamically ( they do not get written into the drive :) ) When you plug in a drive into the PC, the next available letter in that Windows PC is assigned. It may not always be the same letter in every PC. When you unplug the drive, Windows releases that drive letter and it will be available for any other drive that you may plug in. If and when you think/face any drive letter issue,seek help here.

If your principal problem is resolved , then mark this thread as solved. It can help others facing similar issue.

NOTE: You may now delete all the previous screenshots taken / saved with bootice. Save the current partition structure instead.

I feel like dancing.

Enjoy.