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2 primary partitions???

Discussion in 'Storage and Networking' started by RustyZip, Aug 11, 2002.

  1. RustyZip TechSpot Paladin Posts: 415

    Hi...

    Well i just recieved my new 80 Gb Hard Drive, and installed it, put on Win XP etc etc, and i looked in XP's Computer Management and it says that i have 2 primary partitions on the one drive - is that normal??? I don't think so...

    This is what it says...

    .......................|.......................| -----Extended Partition-----|
    Primary Partition | Primary Partition | Logical Drive | Logical Drive |
    -------C:-------|--------D:-------|------E:-----|------F:-----|

    It doesn't report any errors, neither does Partition Magic 7.0...

    I thought you were supposed to have 1 primary partition, and the rest was an extended partition containing logical drives???

    Or am i a complete buffoon, and this is all normal and ok???

    Hope i explained myself properly....
    Cheers...
  2. Phantasm66 Newcomer, in training Posts: 6,504

    Yes, that's just fine.

    There are a limit of the number of primary partitions you can have, though.
  3. RustyZip TechSpot Paladin Posts: 415

    Cheers Phantasm66...

    Once again, you've come up trumps....:grinthumb

    Thats 16 Pints i owe you now...:p

    Just another thing...

    When i installed the new drive, BIOS auto-detected it and put in the relevant info, ie: sectors, heads, cylinders etc, and i checked on the Western Digital website, and they had a different configuration.

    Should i leave it as it seems to be working fine, or should i manually change it to what WD says???

    Thanks again...
  4. RustyZip TechSpot Paladin Posts: 415

    Ooopps...

    Should of probably started a new thread...:eek:
  5. Phantasm66 Newcomer, in training Posts: 6,504

    Generally speaking its safe to go with the geometry that the BIOS has detected the HDD as.

    Certainly if you can see all of the disk and there isn't a problem.

    If you have a choice of geometries, I usually go with LBA mode.

    I don't think you will have any major problems.