Understanding Partition Types

Before you create your partitions, you should first understand these disk concepts:

  • Active and boot partitions

  • Primary partition

  • Extended partition

active partition

The partition that the computer identifies as the one that will be used to boot up the computer and load the operating system.

boot partition

Synonymous with the active partition on a disk. The boot partition contains the necessary files to start the operating system on the computer.

primary partition

The first and bootable partition you create on a hard drive.

extended partition

A non-bootable partition containing DOS logical drives.

Active and Boot Partitions

When you start your computer, the start-up process looks for the partition that is marked as active. This is almost always the C drive. The active partition should have the system files used by your computer to load the operating system. The partition that contains the operating system files is the boot partition. Normally, the active partition and the boot partition are the same. Only a primary partition can be designated as an active partition.

Primary Partition

Traditionally, the first partition you define is the primary partition. With the DOS operating system, only one primary partition will be recognized. The primary partition is assigned all the disk space you allocate to it. For example, if you were to create the first partition as a primary partition and allocate 1GB of space, the first drive by default (the primary drive) would be the C drive and would consist of 1GB of usable space.

With the Windows Family of OSes, you can have up to four partitions per physical disk. This can consist of four primary partitions, or three primary partitions and one extended partition.

Each physical partition can have only one drive letter assigned to it.

Extended Partition

An extended partition is a physical partition that cannot be used as a boot partition. Within an extended partition, you can create up to 23 logical drives. For example, you could create a single extended partition that is 1GB in size. Within the extended partition, you could then create four logical drives-D, E, F, and G-that were each 250MB.




MCSA. MCSE 2003 JumpStart. Computer and Network Basics
MCSA/MCSE 2003 JumpStart
ISBN: 078214277X
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2003
Pages: 203
Authors: Lisa Donald

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