Aloha.
What's the point of marking a partition as active?
Thanks.

"LMO" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
news:6C9AA78E-7D7E-4A7A-B13C-(E-Mail Removed)...
> Aloha.
> What's the point of marking a partition as active?
> Thanks.
>

Marking a partition active tells the BIOS that this is the partition to be
used for the booting process.

LMO wrote:

> Aloha.
> What's the point of marking a partition as active?
> Thanks.

As was mentioned by another poster the Active Partition is the one that
will be used to boot the operating system. A basic MBR disk needs a
primary active partition to be able to boot the computer, there can only
be one active partition on a basic disk but the active status can be
changed and assigned from one primary partition to another one.

If you are seeing this in the Disk Management tool and if this is the
disk where Windows is installed the partition labeled as the (System)
partition is the one that is set as active, it doesn't have an option to
be marked as active because it already is the active partition. Do not
remove the active flag from the System partition, you will not be able
to boot Windows if you remove the active flag from the System partition.

John

Its the boot partition.

"LMO" wrote:

> Aloha.
> What's the point of marking a partition as active?
> Thanks.
>

I marked an external drive as active (an IDE 250GB USB drive). It showed up
in the Disk Management, but would not show up in MY Computer, until I marked
it as active. It is not powered on during the boot process. I turn it on when
I need that data on it. Does it matter whether it is marked active or not?
Doesn't seem to make a difference.
Thanks for the feedback.

"LMO" wrote:

> Aloha.
> What's the point of marking a partition as active?
> Thanks.
>

Its a single bit. Its purpose is to let the bios know that a primary
partition exists to attempt to boot from.

In MS XP terminology, this partition is called the system partition.
--
Dave

Food for thought. May cost more or
perhaps the same if the credit market
is allowed to correct on its own. The
added benefit is the credit market won't risk
doing the same thing or similar again
in the future. As a result, such risks taken
by borrowers won't eixist either.
"LMO" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
news:6C9AA78E-7D7E-4A7A-B13C-(E-Mail Removed)...
> Aloha.
> What's the point of marking a partition as active?
> Thanks.
>

Ey, Bra -

An external drive (providing that it isn't an eSATA drive) cannot
be involved in the booting process, so its "active" flag is irrelevant.
I am even surprised that it must be marked "active" to show up in
MyComputer.

*TimDaniels*

"LMO" wrote:
> I marked an external drive as active (an IDE 250GB USB drive). It showed up
> in the Disk Management, but would not show up in MY Computer, until I marked
> it as active. It is not powered on during the boot process. I turn it on when
> I need that data on it. Does it matter whether it is marked active or not?
> Doesn't seem to make a difference.
> Thanks for the feedback.
>
> "LMO" wrote:
>
>> Aloha.
>> What's the point of marking a partition as active?
>> Thanks.
>>

This is misleading. In Microsoft terminology, the partition that contains
the Boot Sector and which contains the boot.ini boot menu and the
ntldr boot loader and ntdetect.com environment detector - is called the
System partition. Also in Microsoft terminology, the partition that contains
the operating system that is to be loaded is called the Boot partition. It's
intuitively backwards, but it is that way for historical reasons. And in
WinNT, Win2K, and WinXP, the Boot partition and the System partitions
need not be the same partition and need not even be on the same hard drive,
and the Boot partition may even be within an Extended partition. That is,
the operating system may be loaded from a non-Primary partition. Only
the System partition (that contains the afore-mentioned boot files) must
be a Primary partition and marked "active", and be on the hard drive that
is at the top of the hard drive boot priority to boot the system.

*TimDaniels*

"Andrew" wrote:
> Its the boot partition.
>
> "LMO" wrote:
>
>> Aloha.
>> What's the point of marking a partition as active?
>> Thanks.
>>

On Sun, 12 Oct 2008 20:24:31 -0700, "Timothy Daniels"
<(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:

> This is misleading. In Microsoft terminology, the partition that contains
> the Boot Sector and which contains the boot.ini boot menu and the
> ntldr boot loader and ntdetect.com environment detector - is called the
> System partition. Also in Microsoft terminology, the partition that contains
> the operating system that is to be loaded is called the Boot partition. It's
> intuitively backwards, but it is that way for historical reasons.


What you say is of course correct, and unfortunately often
misunderstood, because it's the opposite of what people intuitively
expect, and they often therefore use the terms "Boot Partition" and
"System Partition" backwards.

If anyone doubts this, it can be verified at
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/314470/EN-US/



> And in
> WinNT, Win2K, and WinXP, the Boot partition and the System partitions
> need not be the same partition and need not even be on the same hard drive,
> and the Boot partition may even be within an Extended partition. That is,
> the operating system may be loaded from a non-Primary partition. Only
> the System partition (that contains the afore-mentioned boot files) must
> be a Primary partition and marked "active", and be on the hard drive that
> is at the top of the hard drive boot priority to boot the system.
>
> *TimDaniels*
>
> "Andrew" wrote:
> > Its the boot partition.
> >
> > "LMO" wrote:
> >
> >> Aloha.
> >> What's the point of marking a partition as active?
> >> Thanks.
> >>
>

--
Ken Blake, Microsoft MVP - Windows Desktop Experience
Please Reply to the Newsgroup

Can't argue with that after it's marked active. Timothy describes what MS
terminology is now regarding what an active partition is, the system
partition. Ken states what the population in general interprets as the boot
partition, not MS Candidly, this general opinion is sourced from the MS
versions of windows that had msdos as their base. Specifically, 3.x, 95
versions A, B, C, 98, 98SE and Millenium. Yes, you may install windows of
these versions on an alternate partition, but seldom done for many reasons.
Many former souls used to use msdos real mode in general, it was for intents
and purposes the boot partition. In a historical sense, MS swayed its
description of the boot partition. But, in the strict NT sense, it has not
changed. One may argue that many ways, XP is a big brother of Millenium.
True, Millenium was used as a test bed for many things embedded in XP. XP
is not based on msdos (Millenium), and uses a similar boot routine as NT and
2K, so the system partition description. How these diverged by partition
description at NT and msdos/windows remains to be a gray area. So, I
continue to call the active partition, the boot partition. MS: see the
defintion of partition in reference to booting.. MS ignores common sense as
usual. Case closed due to historical indifference of MS.
--
Dave

"Andrew" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
news:F1EAAC70-CD88-4500-A0E7-(E-Mail Removed)...
> Its the boot partition.
>
> "LMO" wrote:
>
>> Aloha.
>> What's the point of marking a partition as active?
>> Thanks.
>>