Partition or Volume - Create New

Hi ....its me again i am uploading the creen shots pla see if i m doing some thing wrong in the process

Hello again, attached is a snapshot of the current status;
so I right-clicked on the free space I had and performed the "simple partition" wizard, ending up with a new "logical" partition M: as in snaphot:
My questions are getting more!
1- Why is it a "logical" and not a primary partition?
2- How can I divide this to 2 partitions?
3- Why the "shrink" order on drive C: only allows me to shrink it to 200GB (ie. by ~ 230 GB), I felt 100 GB should be enough for drive C: and I could use the rest for my stuff?!
4- Why Disk 0 is 465 GB? is that the total storage space of my drive? where's the rest of the 500 GB?
5- If I need to recover windows using the recovery discs I made (right after purchasing the laptop and before performing any partitioning, will my paritions (currently only M: ) stay unaffected?

Awaiting your replies!

Thanx Brink for your reply and sorry for my further questions:

Q1: from the snapshot I see I have 2 primary partitions C: and D: (recovery), is "system" a seperate partition? I'm a little confused cuz I'm just switching from Win XP which was much simpler!

Q2: It worked, now I have 2 logical partitions (100 GB each) in addition to C: D:

Q3: For Drive C: now you see its 247 GB, when I try to shrink it now I get a "size of available shrink space" 20607 MB (only 20GB!), do you have an explanation for that? The system is new and I haven't yet installed any softwares or played around that much to need a defragmentation I suppose.

Q5: That's assuring.. what if I deciede to downgrade to windows XP? what will be the case?

Sorry for all the questions again, really I'm new to all this and your input is very valuable at this point.

Thanx a lot Brink, your input was very useful
Will let you know if I face other confusions of course!!

Brink said:

No problem,

Q1) That would be your OEM system partition. It is a separate partition, but it just doesn't have a drive letter assigned to it since it is a system partition instead. That's all.

Q2) Great news. :)

Q3) Your C: drive will also have allocated space set aside for the page file (virtual memory), superfetch, restore points, etc.... Even though they may not use up the allocated space, the allocated space is not available for use by you. Thus, you cannot shrink it.

Q4/5) If you decide to downgrade, then just format the C: drive to wipe out Windows 7 and install XP on it.

Hey Brink
Q3) I'm still a little puzzled about this, my C: partition now is 227 GB and can no longer shrink it further, although I see other people with C: partitions of much smaller size reaching 80 GB... so now I have around 200 GB that my system uses and not available for my use, leaving me only with the 200 GB I divided upon the other 2 logical partitions? Do I understand this correct? What is extra in my system's case to need 227 GB untouched and unavailable for my use?
that really depresses me if so :-( so the only way to use it is store some of my stuff on the C: parition? I usually don't prefer that and always store my stuff away from C: which I leave only for the OS.
Is anyone else out there having this situation too?