Windows 7 200MB Partition

Hello all....:)

I wanted to start a dialog about this but I didn't want to do it in other people's threads. Not to mention; having one place to figure this out.

smarteyeball said:

Seven creates a 200MB partition at the start of drive for the boot data. (If it's a fresh drive, with no other OS installed / connected)

Posted Here

I would like to know if this will affect how many "Primary Partition(s)" as opposed to "Extended Partition / Logical Drive(s)" are created in the normal course of creating partitions / drives. As I understand it; only three "Primary Partitions" can be created on any one HDD; any other partitions created must be an "Extended Partition"; which can't host the active boot files of the OS. This of course; in turn, limits the amount of drives that can host an OS on a HDD.

Where all this is leading: If Windows 7 creates this 200MB Partition as the first partition on the HDD; then that will limit how many (to two) partitions that are left to host an OS on that HDD. Now I know that few people dual boot; let alone multi boot on a single HDD.

I just wanted to hear what thoughts y'all have about this.


Later Ted

Example pics:

x3haloed said:

It's actually four primary partitions.

Hello x3haloed.

Not according to this.




Later Ted

lol, I don't see how that picture proves anything.


I'll post a VHD with 4 primary partitions if you like :P

doubleblack said:

This pissed me off, because now I can't use TrueCrypt

why not?

x3haloed said:

It's actually four primary partitions, but yeah.

multi-booting is just silly in my opinion. Plus who needs to dual-boot with Windows 7 on a single HDD, when you can just boot from a VHD?

Yeah, multibooting is silly, especially when dealing with a *pre-BETA* OS - so if the OS goes south, you can still boot your VHDs, right?

feh. Nice try. Remember it has to be a Virtual PC created VHD - Steve has been trying to get VMs from others to work and thus far ain't getting too far. I am pretty positive that VBox images don't work at the moment....

Bare Foot Kid said:

Hello x3haloed.

Not according to this.




Later Ted

Windows only allows 4 primary partitions *or* 3 primary partitions and 1 Extended partition. Logical partitions are created inside of the extended partitions and are numbered 5+. Although the extended partition is not a physically accessible partition in and of itself, it is still (unofficially) using one of the 4 primary partition numbers.

This is the way it has always been - even in *nix. Create 4 primary partitions, or create 3 primary, 1 extended, and all subsequent logical partitions inside the extended.

x3haloed said:

lol, I don't see how that picture proves anything.

I'll post a VHD with 4 primary partitions if you like :P

Please do - and then create an extended partition *after* having 4 primary partitions.

And before you run screaming back to me about you were only talking about 4 primary partitions, please *re-read* what Ted wrote in the very first post.