Partitions versus logical drives

[Stuart Brown]

I am just adding a 160GB external hard drive and will need to partition it
into 3 drives.

What are the relative merits of providing 3 extended partitions or
alternatively providing logical drives? They both seem to fulfil the same
function

Stuart Brown

 

[CS]

I am just adding a 160GB external hard drive and will need to partition it
into 3 drives.

What are the relative merits of providing 3 extended partitions or
alternatively providing logical drives? They both seem to fulfil the same
function

Stuart Brown

You can not create a "logical drive" without first creating an
extended partition. Just create one large extended partition for
your 160 gb drive and then create how ever many logical drives within
the extended partition you wish.

 

[I'm Dan]

I am just adding a 160GB external hard drive and will need to
partition it into 3 drives.

What are the relative merits of providing 3 extended partitions
or alternatively providing logical drives? They both seem to
fulfil the same function

Since you can only have one extended partition per HDD, I think you're
probably referring to the same thing. The proper terminology is logical
volumes within the (one and only) extended primary partition. These
logical volumes are often commonly referred to as logical drives.

 

[Stuart Brown]

Thank you CS and Dan. You have now made things clear for me. I wish some
books were as clear.

Stuart Brown

 

[Old Geek]

Go to the PowerQuest web site and look in their support area. They have some
great write-ups on drive partitioning!

 

[Alex Nichol]

I am just adding a 160GB external hard drive and will need to partition it
into 3 drives.

What are the relative merits of providing 3 extended partitions or
alternatively providing logical drives? They both seem to fulfil the same
function

For just three, you might as well use three primary (not extended)
partitions. An extended partition is a way of getting round the limit
of there only being four slots in a drive's partition table. By using
one for an extended partition, that can be used as a 'wrapper' for a
number of additional partition tables (each effectively locking out 8MB
of the drive) which chain together, each describing one 'logical'
volume. There is no practical difference in performance, apart from
that small loss of space, except that the initial boot of a system has
to be in a Primary one, recorded in the main table

 

[Stuart Brown]

Thank you Alex. Most helpful. I had the impression that there was some
other reason for not using several primary partitions.

Stuart Brown