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RE: Partitions, Physical & Logical Drives

Tippon — Wed, 02 Jan 2008 17:08:16 GMT

Thanks Bruce :)

RE: Partitions, Physical & Logical Drives

Bruce R — Wed, 02 Jan 2008 14:12:14 GMT

Hi Freakshow! and Tippon

Until Freakshow!'s report I hadn't seen anything but C: being the drive letter allocated to the working DOS/Win OS, but Tippon, you seem to have the nub of it, the MBR location, with the way in which it is first initialised then remaining constant for that physical drive.

Partition Magic, which wasn't really designed for Linux use by PowerQuest, seems to impose Linux unfriendly partition boundaries, which Linux installation changes in a way that then upsets PartitionMagic subsequent editing. This has been particularly true for Linux distributions using early versions of GPartEd which is why I have taken to booting from complete switch off into PartEdMagic v1.9 on a Live MiniCD wherever possible as it seems to produce the fewest problems. However, early BIOS versions like my [[b]C[/b]] rig seem to introduce further discrepancies, so for that I use an old GPartEd 0.3.3.0 live MiniCD, which works from cold. (For GPartEd it's mainly a question of finding a BIOS-compatible Linux kernel based version, which is why I have three to choose from, PartEdMagic v.1.9, PartEdmagic v1.8 and GpartEd0.3.3.0, using different Linux kernels.)

Sorry to use 'seem' a lot, but I'm a 'use what works' kind of a guy, not a BIOS/OS/kernel expert !

I hope that answers your question Tippon.

Edit - Drive letter reference corrected above to [[b]C[/b]] rig..

RE: Partitions, Physical & Logical Drives

Tippon — Wed, 02 Jan 2008 10:43:02 GMT

FS: I've found that the drive containing the Windows MBR is always C:\, wherever you put Windows itself.

Bruce: What are the limitations of using Partition Magic and Linux partitions? I'd rather know about the pitfalls before I fall headfirst into them :P

RE: Partitions, Physical & Logical Drives

FreakShow! — Wed, 02 Jan 2008 07:19:29 GMT

The OS does not necessarily take C :)

Partitions, Physical & Logical Drives

Bruce R — Wed, 02 Jan 2008 02:38:41 GMT

Noticing a lot of confusion about 'drive' letter assignments and their use, I hope that this will help.

As a continuing legacy from the creation of early Disc Operating Systems, first for floppy and then for hard drive use, the BIOS limits the number of main partitions to four for each physical hard drive. These can be visible or hidden primary, bootable or extended, non-bootable partitions, further sub-divided into logical data drives. I have yet to see a drive that overcomes this old limit, but as extra drives are now cheap or better value for money, and multiple SATA drive interfaces now quite common, that's unlikely to be a real problem.

When visible or hidden Operating Systems are installed they need a primary partition and during installation or re-installation, Windows USUALLY assigns that partition as its C: drive and automatically assigns other A-Z letters to the other visible drives, which can include other operating system drives. So, a Vista C; drive may re-appear with a different drive letter in WinXP, and vice versa. (It NOW appears that re-installation CAN change the C: drive letter assignment, but for a fix see http://support.microsoft.com/kb/223188, found by Brum.)

(Note that a proprietary recovery system can simply be a custom Win2K installation, hidden at the end of the drive, using up one of the four partitions. Also note that a given BIOS or make of hard disk drive can impose different limits on operating system boundaries, even limiting the overall physical drive size.)

In WinXP (or Vista), right clicking on My Computer (or Computer), Manage can provide access to Computer Management to select Disk Management, where by right clicking on 'drives', their initially assigned drive letters can be changed and then shuffled around (with the exception of the assigned system's drive). Initialisation, naming and formatting of partitions is also possible.

Partition Magic can offer a simpler display of visible and hidden DOS or Windows partitions and of extended partition logical data drives, but has Linux partition limitations, especially when used for editing, post Linux installation. Recent Linux LiveCD variants of GnomePartitionEDitor (gparted) provide more Linux information and can achieve better editing results. (See Partition Editing.)

Edited with later post contributions - thank you folks !