Partition issue

[SPIKEpilot]

I just bought a Toshiba laptop Win7 64 bit installed. It already came with 3 primary partitions on the MBR, the system drive 1.46 GB, C: drive 580 GB,and HD recovery 13.5 GB. It also has an unallocated partition of 867 MB. I also want to have a primary for an XP OS as well. Is this possible? I understand that I can only have 4 primary, or 3 primary with one extended, so by adding the XP primary partition, I use my 4 primarys. Is there a way around this so I can have the extra primary drive for my XP boot but also be able to have a logical drive for my data? Kinda stuck on which way to go.

 

[karlsnooks]

I just bought a Toshiba laptop Win7 64 bit installed. It already came with 3 primary partitions on the MBR, the system drive 1.46 GB, C: drive 580 GB,and HD recovery 13.5 GB. It also has an unallocated partition of 867 MB. I also want to have a primary for an XP OS as well. Is this possible? I understand that I can only have 4 primary, or 3 primary with one extended, so by adding the XP primary partition, I use my 4 primarys. Is there a way around this so I can have the extra primary drive for my XP boot but also be able to have a logical drive for my data? Kinda stuck on which way to go.

Welcome to SevenForums Spike,

I can't really be of much help.

I'm strongly opposed to dual-boot systems although we have some very talented people here who have dual-boot systems.

Nowadays, installing XP as a virtual machine would be a wiser approach.

This link can tell you some more about the capabilities of your hardware:
Download Details - Microsoft Download Center - HAV Detection Tool

 

[Britton30]

Welcome to Seven Forums SPIKEpilot.

If you create an extended partition, then you can have as many logical partitions within it as you have drive letters for. Two tutorials to read:
http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/2674-partition-volume-create-new.html

http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/2670-partition-volume-extend.html

Hope this will help you out.