WIN partition divides my HDD

[dsperber]

BTW, you sure have a lot of partitions. Why?
I really hated the fact I divided my single HDD to 4 partitions when I only got it like 5 years ago.
And I couldnt really do anything because I had too much data on each partition. So I couldn't just transfer data to another partition and combine them together.

These partitions reflect my hardware evolution over the years. Way back when, hard drives were MUCH SMALLER, and adding more internal hard drives when more space was needed was the early "solution".

Gradually, hard drives got larger, and a single larger drive could easily replace multiple smaller drives. Since I already had folders and data organization set in my mind from the multiple smaller drives, I decided to implement the hardware replacement/upgrade through partitions rather than just consolidating all of the data onto a single huge partition (although it would fit that way). It was easier for me to move forward with partitions substituting for drives, and change none of the actual data location/organization of what was on which "drive" (now a "partition").

Note that the drive lettering is also not just "sequential". The contents of a particular "drive letter" is what my brain remembers, and depending on its space requirement may or may not fit on a particular hard drive. It matters zero to me what drive a particular partition (and its drive letter) reside on, other than the fact that as I've upgraded to much faster SATA-III drives I've rearranged partitions somewhat so that the faster/larger drives are used for faster/larger needs (e.g. \Recorded TV folder for my HTPC needs is on a fast+large drive).

My mind is now to set in its understanding of what I have on what drive letter (i.e. "partition") to change anything. I just like it that way. Just depends what you get used to... whether you have hundreds of folders on a single large partition, or whether you sub-divide the folders and spread them across multiple smaller partitions (possibly being on multiple physical hard drives).

There's really no right or wrong here. It's effortless for me to understand this organization (and I have THREE machines which have almost identical partitioning and drive lettering for my duplicated data organization on all three machines, even if they don't have the same number of hard drives and the actual partition sizes aren't identical on all three machines because the data capacity requirements differ on the three machines). My backup jobs are just set up to back up multiple partitions rather than just one large partition, so once I have that job created it just runs. Who cares if it's multiple partitions, if it is actually simpler for me to find things that way.

I have a another two questions.

#1 What if I'd like to delet my old windows partition in the future (The one I am trying to keep as for now)?
I read that you can't delete the old Win partition because it may contain the boot files that my current system uses.

We've had this discussion already.

Boot Manager as triggered at boot time by the BIOS lives in the "active" partition on what is normally the first hard drive in the BIOS boot sequence (although technically it can live in an "active" partition on a later drive in the BIOS boot sequence).

That "active" partition can be the small 100MB "system reserved" partition as it normally is for a newly installed Windows on a brand new empty hard drive, or it can inside some actual Windows system partition (i.e. C, when booted to that Windows), as it now is for you since you did a "system repair" and didn't have an "active" "system reserved" partition for Repair to put Boot Manager into. I actually still think this might have been your original "D" (to the left of your old Windows) which was probably "D" to your second installed Windows, but which you've since deleted and also now slid the old Windows partition left (using Acronis, so you said). Whatever... that D is now gone.

Anyway, even if you delete an old unwanted Windows partition (and also remove the Boot Manager Menu list item per the tutorial) which may actually be where Boot Manager was living, you can once again just run Windows Repair to once again restore Boot Manager to whatever other remaining Windows system partition you do still have left... and also mark that partition as "active". This is just what you recently did on this thread to get your system working again when it could not be booted. That's what Windows Repair does.

If in Disk manager I see that my current windows C drive is marked as System, Boot and Active while my old Windows drive is marked just as "Primary drive", is it fine deleting the old one?

Yes. Just don't forget to remove its Boot Manager Menu list item (as you did for your third recently installed and now removed Windows partition).

Since you now say your "current Windows C drive" (no doubt on your second hard drive) is System, Boot, and Active, then that's absolutely where Boot Manager and its menu data live. So when you go through the steps to remove the old original Windows from your first hard drive as well as from the Boot Manager Menu list, you will NOT have to re-run Windows Repair since the working Boot Manager and menu are resident in your "active" remaining now remaining operational Windows installed on your second hard drive.

#2 Is there anything I need to know about Logical drives, Extended drives, Primary drives and so on?
It is really confussing.
And I dont see any options considering these things in the built in Disk manager.

Setting aside a discussion about GPT drives (for sizes larger than 2TB) and their partitions, the ordinary MBR drives (for sizes 2TB and smaller) support up to FOUR PRIMARY PARTITIONS. That's the max allowed, so up to four drive letters can be assigned to those four primary partitions.

If you want more than four partitions on a single drive, then you have to start using "logical partitions", which essentially have no limit as far as how many of them you can have on a single drive. Also, there is NO DIFFERENCE IN FUNCTIONALITY between "primary partitions" and "logical partitions", except for one: an "active" partition MUST BE PRIMARY. Otherwise, any other partition can be logical or primary, including an OS Windows system partition which also can be logical or primary (although it's normally created as "primary" by the Windows installer, unless you override that default).

If you want to have at least one logical partition on a drive, then you have to give up one of the maximum of four primary partitions allowed, leaving you now with a maximum of three remaining "lettered" primary partitions. And that one primary partition that you have now re-purposed for supporting your one or more logical partitions (which are all created within that one single re-purposed primary partition), it does not actually have a drive letter. And it's given a name of the "extended partition". It's total purpose is to house the one or more logical partitions sub-allocated inside of it.

So possible divisions of a single hard drive are as follows:

(1) one, two, three or four "primary" partitions, each of which can have its own "drive letter" (really, it's a partition letter).

(2) one, two or three "primary" partitions, along with one "extended partition" inside of which can be sub-allocated essentially any number of "logical partitions", each of which has its own "drive letter" (again, really it's a partition letter).

(3) zero "primary" partitions with letters, along with the entire drive allocated as "extended partition" inside of which are all the partitions on that drive which by definition are all "logical partitions".

DISKMGMT.MSC and Partition Wizard will do whatever is required to conform to the above limitations, whenever you try to do any maintenance on the partitions on a hard drive.


There can be freespace (i.e. unallocated areas of the drive), either outside of or in between the lettered primary partitions (including the "extended partition" which of course is also a re-purposed "unlettered primary partition" as I described earlier). And there can also be freespace within the "extended partition" where all of the "logical partitions" reside, again anywhere to the left or right of whatever "logical partitions" you have created.

Note that DISKMGMT.MSC and Partition Wizard et.al. don't really care about whether a partition is "primary" or "logical" from the perspective of size or content, or FAT32 vs. NTFS, etc.. They're functionally identical partitions, no matter "logical" or "primary".

However there are obvious physical considerations regarding where you put them and their linear arrangement, since there can only be one "extended partition" on a drive (inside of which must therefore be located all of whatever "logical partitions" you allocate, even if there is "logical freespace" between them). The one "extended partition" on the drive can be between two other "primary partitions", or it can be at the extreme-left or extreme-right of the drive, or it can occupy the entire drive. It's all up to you.

For "data drives" in my opinion there's really no reason to ever allocate "primary partitions", since that limits them to four maximum on the drive. If you simply allocate the entire drive as one "extended partition" then inside it you can allocate essentially an infinite number of "logical partitions". And since there is no functional difference for "data" between a logical and primary partition, who cares... might as well create "logical partitions".


Finally, you don't actually create the "extended partition" yourself through any specific explicit action.

Instead, the Windows system "carves out and automatically creates" the boundaries of what will become this "extended partition" when you define the very first "logical partition" on the drive, assuming you're not already at the maximum of four primary partitions allocated on the drive. If you already have four primary partitions allocated then you first must delete one (to get down to three) if you want to now define one or more logical partitions (since that requires an "extended partition").

The space freed up by the just deleted primary partition will be used to automatically create the "extended partition" inside of which your first "logical partition" will then be created, and inside of which any additional "logical partitions" you subsequently create will be located if your logical partition size allocation(s) leave freespace for more logical partitions to be created.


Questions?

 

[MajorG]

BTW, you sure have a lot of partitions. Why?
I really hated the fact I divided my single HDD to 4 partitions when I only got it like 5 years ago.
And I couldnt really do anything because I had too much data on each partition. So I couldn't just transfer data to another partition and combine them together.

These partitions reflect my hardware evolution over the years. Way back when, hard drives were MUCH SMALLER, and adding more internal hard drives when more space was needed was the early "solution".

Gradually, hard drives got larger, and a single larger drive could easily replace multiple smaller drives. Since I already had folders and data organization set in my mind from the multiple smaller drives, I decided to implement the hardware replacement/upgrade through partitions rather than just consolidating all of the data onto a single huge partition (although it would fit that way). It was easier for me to move forward with partitions substituting for drives, and change none of the actual data location/organization of what was on which "drive" (now a "partition").

Note that the drive lettering is also not just "sequential". The contents of a particular "drive letter" is what my brain remembers, and depending on its space requirement may or may not fit on a particular hard drive. It matters zero to me what drive a particular partition (and its drive letter) reside on, other than the fact that as I've upgraded to much faster SATA-III drives I've rearranged partitions somewhat so that the faster/larger drives are used for faster/larger needs (e.g. \Recorded TV folder for my HTPC needs is on a fast+large drive).

My mind is now to set in its understanding of what I have on what drive letter (i.e. "partition") to change anything. I just like it that way. Just depends what you get used to... whether you have hundreds of folders on a single large partition, or whether you sub-divide the folders and spread them across multiple smaller partitions (possibly being on multiple physical hard drives).

There's really no right or wrong here. It's effortless for me to understand this organization (and I have THREE machines which have almost identical partitioning and drive lettering for my duplicated data organization on all three machines, even if they don't have the same number of hard drives and the actual partition sizes aren't identical on all three machines because the data capacity requirements differ on the three machines). My backup jobs are just set up to back up multiple partitions rather than just one large partition, so once I have that job created it just runs. Who cares if it's multiple partitions, if it is actually simpler for me to find things that way.

I have a another two questions.

#1 What if I'd like to delet my old windows partition in the future (The one I am trying to keep as for now)?
I read that you can't delete the old Win partition because it may contain the boot files that my current system uses.

We've had this discussion already.

Boot Manager as triggered at boot time by the BIOS lives in the "active" partition on what is normally the first hard drive in the BIOS boot sequence (although technically it can live in an "active" partition on a later drive in the BIOS boot sequence).

That "active" partition can be the small 100MB "system reserved" partition as it normally is for a newly installed Windows on a brand new empty hard drive, or it can inside some actual Windows system partition (i.e. C, when booted to that Windows), as it now is for you since you did a "system repair" and didn't have an "active" "system reserved" partition for Repair to put Boot Manager into. I actually still think this might have been your original "D" (to the left of your old Windows) which was probably "D" to your second installed Windows, but which you've since deleted and also now slid the old Windows partition left (using Acronis, so you said). Whatever... that D is now gone.

Anyway, even if you delete an old unwanted Windows partition (and also remove the Boot Manager Menu list item per the tutorial) which may actually be where Boot Manager was living, you can once again just run Windows Repair to once again restore Boot Manager to whatever other remaining Windows system partition you do still have left... and also mark that partition as "active". This is just what you recently did on this thread to get your system working again when it could not be booted. That's what Windows Repair does.

If in Disk manager I see that my current windows C drive is marked as System, Boot and Active while my old Windows drive is marked just as "Primary drive", is it fine deleting the old one?

Yes. Just don't forget to remove its Boot Manager Menu list item (as you did for your third recently installed and now removed Windows partition).

Since you now say your "current Windows C drive" (no doubt on your second hard drive) is System, Boot, and Active, then that's absolutely where Boot Manager and its menu data live. So when you go through the steps to remove the old original Windows from your first hard drive as well as from the Boot Manager Menu list, you will NOT have to re-run Windows Repair since the working Boot Manager and menu are resident in your "active" remaining now remaining operational Windows installed on your second hard drive.

#2 Is there anything I need to know about Logical drives, Extended drives, Primary drives and so on?
It is really confussing.
And I dont see any options considering these things in the built in Disk manager.

Setting aside a discussion about GPT drives (for sizes larger than 2TB) and their partitions, the ordinary MBR drives (for sizes 2TB and smaller) support up to FOUR PRIMARY PARTITIONS. That's the max allowed, so up to four drive letters can be assigned to those four primary partitions.

If you want more than four partitions on a single drive, then you have to start using "logical partitions", which essentially have no limit as far as how many of them you can have on a single drive. Also, there is NO DIFFERENCE IN FUNCTIONALITY between "primary partitions" and "logical partitions", except for one: an "active" partition MUST BE PRIMARY. Otherwise, any other partition can be logical or primary, including an OS Windows system partition which also can be logical or primary (although it's normally created as "primary" by the Windows installer, unless you override that default).

If you want to have at least one logical partition on a drive, then you have to give up one of the maximum of four primary partitions allowed, leaving you now with a maximum of three remaining "lettered" primary partitions. And that one primary partition that you have now re-purposed for supporting your one or more logical partitions (which are all created within that one single re-purposed primary partition), it does not actually have a drive letter. And it's given a name of the "extended partition". It's total purpose is to house the one or more logical partitions sub-allocated inside of it.

So possible divisions of a single hard drive are as follows:

(1) one, two, three or four "primary" partitions, each of which can have its own "drive letter" (really, it's a partition letter).

(2) one, two or three "primary" partitions, along with one "extended partition" inside of which can be sub-allocated essentially any number of "logical partitions", each of which has its own "drive letter" (again, really it's a partition letter).

(3) zero "primary" partitions with letters, along with the entire drive allocated as "extended partition" inside of which are all the partitions on that drive which by definition are all "logical partitions".

DISKMGMT.MSC and Partition Wizard will do whatever is required to conform to the above limitations, whenever you try to do any maintenance on the partitions on a hard drive.


There can be freespace (i.e. unallocated areas of the drive), either outside of or in between the lettered primary partitions (including the "extended partition" which of course is also a re-purposed "unlettered primary partition" as I described earlier). And there can also be freespace within the "extended partition" where all of the "logical partitions" reside, again anywhere to the left or right of whatever "logical partitions" you have created.

Note that DISKMGMT.MSC and Partition Wizard et.al. don't really care about whether a partition is "primary" or "logical" from the perspective of size or content, or FAT32 vs. NTFS, etc.. They're functionally identical partitions, no matter "logical" or "primary".

However there are obvious physical considerations regarding where you put them and their linear arrangement, since there can only be one "extended partition" on a drive (inside of which must therefore be located all of whatever "logical partitions" you allocate, even if there is "logical freespace" between them). The one "extended partition" on the drive can be between two other "primary partitions", or it can be at the extreme-left or extreme-right of the drive, or it can occupy the entire drive. It's all up to you.

For "data drives" in my opinion there's really no reason to ever allocate "primary partitions", since that limits them to four maximum on the drive. If you simply allocate the entire drive as one "extended partition" then inside it you can allocate essentially an infinite number of "logical partitions". And since there is no functional difference for "data" between a logical and primary partition, who cares... might as well create "logical partitions".


Finally, you don't actually create the "extended partition" yourself through any specific explicit action.

Instead, the Windows system "carves out and automatically creates" the boundaries of what will become this "extended partition" when you define the very first "logical partition" on the drive, assuming you're not already at the maximum of four primary partitions allocated on the drive. If you already have four primary partitions allocated then you first must delete one (to get down to three) if you want to now define one or more logical partitions (since that requires an "extended partition").

The space freed up by the just deleted primary partition will be used to automatically create the "extended partition" inside of which your first "logical partition" will then be created, and inside of which any additional "logical partitions" you subsequently create will be located if your logical partition size allocation(s) leave freespace for more logical partitions to be created.


Questions?

I love your comments. Always explained properly.
Thank you.

About the partitioning thing. Dont you think it's better to have more folders than partitions? I mean.. Even if you have to transfer a file or something from one partition to the other it takes time. Making the same thing but from folder to folder, located on the same partition is much much much faster.

I guess you dont transfer heavy files every day, but still..

 

[dsperber]

About the partitioning thing. Dont you think it's better to have more folders than partitions?

I certainly can't justify why I'm more comfortable with my large amount of data organized into a smaller number of folders per partition divided across partition letters C-M (on my HTPC, which has an extra 2TB hard drive containing L and M) or C-K on my other desktop PC or C-J on my laptop. That's just the way I do it and its been that way for many years.

And having all three of my machines with the identical data folder organization (at least across C-K on my two desktops, and across C-J on all three machines) makes it easy for me to sit down at any of the machines and instantly know where everything is. Of course the actual data file contents on each machine's folders on those partitions may differ (or it may actually be the same, duplicated onto multiple machines), but the partitions are the same and the primary folders in those partitions are the same.

I also have my "network connection" drive letters assigned similarly consistently. My two desktop machines partitions C, D, E, etc. are assigned drive letters of P, Q, R, etc. on the other machine. Same with my laptop, which has my desktop HTPC as its "partner", so P, Q, R on the laptop are C, D, E on the HTPC... same as for when I sit down at my second desktop. This consistency (and of course years of practice) makes it easy for me to instantly know where to look for something on whatever machine I'm at.

Would it be the same (or even simpler) if I had everything in just one large data partition on each hard drive (so that I could have large data capacity if I needed it) which still has multiple partitions but just fewer of them, or even some RAID arrangement to hide the separate hard drives themselves and just have "infinite space"? These are just not for me, and how my multi-partition organization has evolved over the past 20 years.

Personal taste, in the end. No right or wrong.

I mean.. Even if you have to transfer a file or something from one partition to the other it takes time. Making the same thing but from folder to folder, located on the same partition is much much much faster.

I guess you dont transfer heavy files every day, but still..

I agree, physically it might take very minor amount of additional time to transfer things from one folder to another on different partitions as compare to if they'd been located on the same partition.

But logically we'd probably have a more meaningful and important discussion (and with more user-benefit) about the "weakness" of Windows Explorer in its GUI to do "transfers", and how you specify FROM and TO in that transfer. Having to open two windows, and do the transfer by drag/drop across the two open windows, well that's a bit clumsy. Much more user-friendly is one of the "split-screen" (i.e. "dual-pane") 3rd-party product alternatives to Windows Explorer.

For example, ever since upgrading from WinXP where I used Canyon Software's "Power File Gold" alternative to Windows Explorer, to Win7 where I've always used FreeCommander_2009b or the newer FreeCommander_XE (which is still being actively ever-fixed and ever-improved by the author through beta versions), I personally prefer the "4-pane approach" which shows both Explorer Tree and folder details in two side-by-side panes, with the screen split vertically into OVER/UNDER so that either top or bottom screen half can be the FROM or TO for a drag/drop action or its equivalent keyboard hotkey shortcut:

FreeCommander is a highly recommended alternative to Windows Explorer. You can split the screen or not, and you depending on your preference can have an over/under or left/right split screen view. The Explorer Tree pane is also optional, so you can have just 1 or 2 panes (side-by-side or over/under) or 2 or 4 panes (again side-by-side or over/under).

Not to say that I never use true Windows Explorer (certainly it's always presented for File OPEN and SAVE AS... dialogs), but when doing everyday Explorer functions like COPY, MOVE and general browse->edit/open, etc., I'm always in FreeCommander.

Similarly I don't use Windows Search AT ALL. I use Everything Search Engine which INSTANTLY finds any full/partial file name in any folder on any of my partitions on all of my hard drives... and presents an ever-improving "hit list" as I type.


In the end it's all just personal taste, and what you've been alerted to by others over the years, and how you've evolved your own computer use preferences over time.

I could not live without Everything Search and FreeCommander.

 

[MajorG]

About the partitioning thing. Dont you think it's better to have more folders than partitions?

I certainly can't justify why I'm more comfortable with my large amount of data organized into a smaller number of folders per partition divided across partition letters C-M (on my HTPC, which has an extra 2TB hard drive containing L and M) or C-K on my other desktop PC or C-J on my laptop. That's just the way I do it and its been that way for many years.

And having all three of my machines with the identical data folder organization (at least across C-K on my two desktops, and across C-J on all three machines) makes it easy for me to sit down at any of the machines and instantly know where everything is. Of course the actual data file contents on each machine's folders on those partitions may differ (or it may actually be the same, duplicated onto multiple machines), but the partitions are the same and the primary folders in those partitions are the same.

I also have my "network connection" drive letters assigned similarly consistently. My two desktop machines partitions C, D, E, etc. are assigned drive letters of P, Q, R, etc. on the other machine. Same with my laptop, which has my desktop HTPC as its "partner", so P, Q, R on the laptop are C, D, E on the HTPC... same as for when I sit down at my second desktop. This consistency (and of course years of practice) makes it easy for me to instantly know where to look for something on whatever machine I'm at.

Would it be the same (or even simpler) if I had everything in just one large data partition on each hard drive (so that I could have large data capacity if I needed it) which still has multiple partitions but just fewer of them, or even some RAID arrangement to hide the separate hard drives themselves and just have "infinite space"? These are just not for me, and how my multi-partition organization has evolved over the past 20 years.

Personal taste, in the end. No right or wrong.

I mean.. Even if you have to transfer a file or something from one partition to the other it takes time. Making the same thing but from folder to folder, located on the same partition is much much much faster.

I guess you dont transfer heavy files every day, but still..

I agree, physically it might take very minor amount of additional time to transfer things from one folder to another on different partitions as compare to if they'd been located on the same partition.

But logically we'd probably have a more meaningful and important discussion (and with more user-benefit) about the "weakness" of Windows Explorer in its GUI to do "transfers", and how you specify FROM and TO in that transfer. Having to open two windows, and do the transfer by drag/drop across the two open windows, well that's a bit clumsy. Much more user-friendly is one of the "split-screen" (i.e. "dual-pane") 3rd-party product alternatives to Windows Explorer.

For example, ever since upgrading from WinXP where I used Canyon Software's "Power File Gold" alternative to Windows Explorer, to Win7 where I've always used FreeCommander_2009b or the newer FreeCommander_XE (which is still being actively ever-fixed and ever-improved by the author through beta versions), I personally prefer the "4-pane approach" which shows both Explorer Tree and folder details in two side-by-side panes, with the screen split vertically into OVER/UNDER so that either top or bottom screen half can be the FROM or TO for a drag/drop action or its equivalent keyboard hotkey shortcut:

FreeCommander is a highly recommended alternative to Windows Explorer. You can split the screen or not, and you depending on your preference can have an over/under or left/right split screen view. The Explorer Tree pane is also optional, so you can have just 1 or 2 panes (side-by-side or over/under) or 2 or 4 panes (again side-by-side or over/under).

Not to say that I never use true Windows Explorer (certainly it's always presented for File OPEN and SAVE AS... dialogs), but when doing everyday Explorer functions like COPY, MOVE and general browse->edit/open, etc., I'm always in FreeCommander.

Similarly I don't use Windows Search AT ALL. I use Everything Search Engine which INSTANTLY finds any full/partial file name in any folder on any of my partitions on all of my hard drives... and presents an ever-improving "hit list" as I type.


In the end it's all just personal taste, and what you've been alerted to by others over the years, and how you've evolved your own computer use preferences over time.

I could not live without Everything Search and FreeCommander.

And again I dont understand why use a third party software..
What's wrong with the built in explorer? The fact that you need to open 2 windows instead of a split screen?

It sure is a matter of taste.
I guess if you have a lot of partitions and folders and data, maybe then it might be easier to navigate and do actions with a third party software.
For me I dont see how it works.
Although I do have lots of folders containing backups and what not from all my years of using a PC.

I just dont really like third party software that don't really do much different from built in functions.

 

[lehnerus2000]

About the partitioning thing. Dont you think it's better to have more folders than partitions? I mean.. Even if you have to transfer a file or something from one partition to the other it takes time. Making the same thing but from folder to folder, located on the same partition is much much much faster.

That is because the file is never moved if you transfer within the same partition (only the references are changed).

The smaller a partition is the quicker it is to scan (or create a backup image of it).

And again I dont understand why use a third party software..
What's wrong with the built in explorer? The fact that you need to open 2 windows instead of a split screen?
....
I just dont really like third party software that don't really do much different from built in functions.

I'd recommend FreeCommander too.

It supports tabs, so you can have as many drives/folders open as you like simultaneously.
The Mass Rename tool is excellent.

Whenever I need to do something other than a simple file transfer, I use FreeCommander.

Windows Explorer has a pretty feeble list of functions compared to most 3rd party file managers (like FreeCommander).