Partitioning a 250G West Digital HD for External Use

[W. Watson]

I purchased a 250G WD eide HD for use as an external drive. I've mounted it
in an ADS HD kit and hooked it up to a USB 2.0 port. I went to Control
Panel->Manage and finally to Disk Mgmt. It detected a Disk 3 (I have a HD on
C and E), and let me through a short Wizard. The new HD drive appears in
the window with the other two drives (Showing something akin to graphics for
each drive with their capacity). It needs to be partitioned. I got that
started, but now it wants to know primary or extended. I would guess
extended, since I think one needs a primary to boot up, and C fills that
bill. The new HD will only contain, for the most part, video data. What's my
choice, primary or extended?

Wayne T. Watson (Watson Adventures, Prop., Nevada City, CA)
(121.015 Deg. W, 39.262 Deg. N) GMT-8 hr std. time)
Obz Site: 39° 15' 7" N, 121° 2' 32" W, 2700 feet

'I think it not improbable that man, like the grub that
prepares a chamber for the winged thing it has never seen but
is to be, may have... destinies that he does not understand."
-- Oliver Wendell Holmes

 

[Rock]

I purchased a 250G WD eide HD for use as an external drive. I've mounted it
in an ADS HD kit and hooked it up to a USB 2.0 port. I went to Control
Panel->Manage and finally to Disk Mgmt. It detected a Disk 3 (I have a HD
on C and E), and let me through a short Wizard. The new HD drive appears in
the window with the other two drives (Showing something akin to graphics
for each drive with their capacity). It needs to be partitioned. I got that
started, but now it wants to know primary or extended. I would guess
extended, since I think one needs a primary to boot up, and C fills that
bill. The new HD will only contain, for the most part, video data. What's
my choice, primary or extended?

Primary for an external drive. No reason to set it as extended.

 

[W. Watson]

Primary for an external drive. No reason to set it as extended.

Thanks. I would gather then that extended means to extend an already
established primary on the same HD? I would guess that it would not be
possible to put a primary on, say, C, and its extension on D?


Wayne T. Watson (Watson Adventures, Prop., Nevada City, CA)
(121.015 Deg. W, 39.262 Deg. N) GMT-8 hr std. time)
Obz Site: 39° 15' 7" N, 121° 2' 32" W, 2700 feet

'I think it not improbable that man, like the grub that
prepares a chamber for the winged thing it has never seen but
is to be, may have... destinies that he does not understand."
-- Oliver Wendell Holmes

 

[Brian A.]

I purchased a 250G WD eide HD for use as an external drive. I've mounted it in an
ADS HD kit and hooked it up to a USB 2.0 port. I went to Control Panel->Manage and
finally to Disk Mgmt. It detected a Disk 3 (I have a HD on C and E), and let me
through a short Wizard. The new HD drive appears in the window with the other two
drives (Showing something akin to graphics for each drive with their capacity). It
needs to be partitioned. I got that started, but now it wants to know primary or
extended. I would guess extended, since I think one needs a primary to boot up, and
C fills that bill. The new HD will only contain, for the most part, video data.
What's my choice, primary or extended?

Wayne T. Watson (Watson Adventures, Prop., Nevada City, CA)
(121.015 Deg. W, 39.262 Deg. N) GMT-8 hr std. time)
Obz Site: 39° 15' 7" N, 121° 2' 32" W, 2700 feet

'I think it not improbable that man, like the grub that
prepares a chamber for the winged thing it has never seen but
is to be, may have... destinies that he does not understand."
-- Oliver Wendell Holmes

Set it as Primary, if you create more than one partition then you would want to set
them as Extended if you have no plans of installing an OS on the extended partition.
If it were an internal disk you could set it as Primary or Extended depending on what
it would be used for.

--

Brian A. Sesko { MS MVP_Shell/User }
Conflicts start where information lacks.
http://basconotw.mvps.org/

Suggested posting do's/don'ts: http://www.dts-l.org/goodpost.htm
How to ask a question: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/555375

 

[Rock]

Thanks. I would gather then that extended means to extend an already
established primary on the same HD?

That's not what it really means.

I would guess that it would not be possible to put a primary on, say, C,
and its extension on D?

Sure, a drive can be partitioned with only one partition that is an extended
partition.

A drive can have up to 4 primary partitions, one of which can be an extended
partition. An extended partition is a means by which you can get more than
four volumes on a drive. An extended partition can be set up with any
number of volumes. So if you want 10 different volumes on one hard drive,
then at least one of the partitions has to be an extended one, that is
itself partitioned for these extra volumes.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Partition_(computing)

 

[W. Watson]

That's not what it really means.


Sure, a drive can be partitioned with only one partition that is an
extended partition.

A drive can have up to 4 primary partitions, one of which can be an
extended partition. An extended partition is a means by which you can
get more than four volumes on a drive. An extended partition can be set
up with any number of volumes. So if you want 10 different volumes on
one hard drive, then at least one of the partitions has to be an
extended one, that is itself partitioned for these extra volumes.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Partition_(computing)

Thanks. It's partitioned as primary now.


Wayne T. Watson (Watson Adventures, Prop., Nevada City, CA)
(121.015 Deg. W, 39.262 Deg. N) GMT-8 hr std. time)
Obz Site: 39° 15' 7" N, 121° 2' 32" W, 2700 feet

'I think it not improbable that man, like the grub that
prepares a chamber for the winged thing it has never seen but
is to be, may have... destinies that he does not understand."
-- Oliver Wendell Holmes

 

[Ancient warrior]

I purchased a 250G WD eide HD for use as an external drive. I've mounted it
in an ADS HD kit and hooked it up to a USB 2.0 port. I went to Control
Panel->Manage and finally to Disk Mgmt. It detected a Disk 3 (I have a HD
on C and E), and let me through a short Wizard. The new HD drive appears in
the window with the other two drives (Showing something akin to graphics
for each drive with their capacity). It needs to be partitioned. I got that
started, but now it wants to know primary or extended. I would guess
extended, since I think one needs a primary to boot up, and C fills that
bill. The new HD will only contain, for the most part, video data. What's
my choice, primary or extended?

Wayne T. Watson (Watson Adventures, Prop., Nevada City, CA)
(121.015 Deg. W, 39.262 Deg. N) GMT-8 hr std. time)
Obz Site: 39° 15' 7" N, 121° 2' 32" W, 2700 feet

'I think it not improbable that man, like the grub that
prepares a chamber for the winged thing it has never seen but
is to be, may have... destinies that he does not understand."
-- Oliver Wendell Holmes

Makes no difference on an external USB connected hard drive.

XP disk management fails to note one thing as its done away with what used
to be one manually intervened process with logical drives. An extended
partition is an area where logical drives are created. More than one
logical drive can be created within the extended partition. The process
used to be:
1. manually selecting an extended partition, followed by its creation.
2. manually selecting the size of the logical drive within the extended
partition, followed by its creation.
Now, its one process invisible to the user.
Ancient warrior