Windows 7 200MB Partition

Hi,

This is a Windows o/s limitation. You can have 4 primaries, or 3 primaries and 1 extended partition ( green rectangle ).

Inside the extended partition you can create logical drives. This is a way of getting round what would otherwise be a 4 volume limit.

The only practical difference, really, is that you can't mark a logical drive as active.

Not sure how you managed to get your extended partition in the middle like that, Ted. LOL

You will find that if you try and shrink/ extend that green rectangle - you can't. You can only do that to the drives inside the extended partition. IMHO it's better to have the extended partition on the right in Disk management.

If that bothers you, you could delete it and repartition, or use a 3rd party app. to move/slide the primary on the right of it across to the left of it. Not sure how well 3rd party apps. handle repartitioning in Win 7, though. Has anybody been using any ?


Hope that helps

SIW2

Sorry, John - didn't see your post - must have been nearly simultaneous.

He managed to get it in the middle because, as you see, the first partition is Vista - he shrunk it to create empty space, and then the extended was created in that said empty space.

The problem with using VPC images is that the hardware that VPC emulates - a friggin PIII, for crying out loud. VMWare and VBox both have the ability to natively emulate the same hardware that the host OS uses as long as the hardware (ie BIOS) supports hardware Virtualization extensions, which most newer machines do. Why should I be stuck emulating a PIII?

And if you have multiple HDs, multi-booting with a Beta OS is *not* silly - multibooting on the same drive *does* put that entire drive at risk, but for those of us with multiple drives, multi-booting is *definitely* an option.

RE: Quake sucks: IDGAF. The avatar is still kewl.

Ok y'all.

How would you go about creating a 4th primary as opposed to the 4th being an extended partition by default? When I created the 4th partition it "just was" an extended partition; I did not choose to make it so; I was not presented with a choice. This is why I'm asking these questions; to get this figured out.












Later Ted

Hello SIW2, thanks for the reply.

No sir, I didn't mean after the fact; I'm sorry I wasn't clearer with the question to start with.

I meant when you first start to set up the partitions from the time when you first install the HDD. Say you know you want to create four partitions total, but you don't want one of them to be an extended; you only want four primary partitions. My question is: is this possible with the default Vista / Windows 7 partition manager?

Thanks again for your time.








Later :) Ted

Hi,

I have heard elsewhere that Vista, and therefore probably Win7,
won't give you the choice.

Afaik, during the installation, you could create 4 partitions - but the last one you create will by default be an extended partition.

The advantage is that the Extended gives you the option to create more volumes inside it.

If you want 4 primaries - after you have installed, use a 3rd party app. to delete the Extended and recreate it as a Primary.

Afaik, you should be able to use a Logical drive as a Boot volume though not as a System (active )partition.

Hope that helps

SIW2

Hello SIW2....:)

First: I want to say thanks for all the help you've been with this.

I kind of expected the above reply; though I have no intention of re-partitioning the main HDD on this machine; I just want the info for the new build I'm putting together. I don't want to get stuck with the situation I'm in with the primary HDD on this machine. I just wanted to have the answers before I start.

Thanks again!








Later Ted

Afaik, you should be able to use a Logical drive as a Boot volume though not as a System (active )partition.

Yep am posting this from within Windows 7 running in a logical drive on an extended partition

just for confirmation that it works