Simple HDD partition question

Good morning,

I have searched this and other forums for an answer, and even posted the question here a month or so ago to no avail.....so here I am trying again.

According to disk management I have one primary partition (C) and two logical drives (E and F) (each running XP). Also it shows a 21 gig portion which is unpartitioned. Basically I want to put this portion to some use.

When I click it and request to partition the space the wizard opens with 3 options: Create either a Primary, Extended or Logical drive. All options are greyed out apart from the Primary Partition option.

On this very same screen there is a message from Microsoft saying that I may create up to 4 primary partitions OR 3 primaries with one extended.

So if I go ahead and select the only option available to me (creat primary) that will mean there's 2 primaries as well as the other 2 logical drives on the HDD, and I am concerned that this will cause problems as per Microsoft message mentioned above

Additional info: I am aware that drives E and F are logical drives as the key in disk management indicates this with a light blue colour. These 2 drives also appear to be grouped together inside a green coloured box, which according to the key indicates that they are part of an 'extended partition'.
Since they are boxed together in this way does it mean that these 2 logical drives only count as one extended drive? And if so, could I not add the unpartitioned space as part of this expended drive?

I really must apologise if my questions are vague and confusing, but I'm rather new to these kind of things, and have explained as clearly as I know how. Any help will be hugely appreciated, thanks for reading my post.

 

Those two logical drives are part of an extended partition. You can put quite a few logical partitions inside of an extended partition. If you want the space, you'd either need to resize the partitions (via Partition Magic, qtparted, etc) or just create a new partition as Windows lets you.

 

Since you already have an Extended partition, why not add the new space as a Logical Drive. This way, you should be able to add the entire amount as drive G: or only add as much of the 21Gb as you need, leaving the remainder unallocated for future use. This way, should you install Linux you would still have 2 partition slots available - one for the <swap> space and the second for the <ext2> or <ext3> partitions.

 

Thank u guys so much for the prompt replies, it is what makes this forum so great.

Ok, so I should add it as a logical drive...but as I said, that option is greyed out, so I assume there is some reason for this. Any ideas?:major

 

You didn't specify what brand of computer you are running. If it's a Compaq or Dell, the portion of the HDD that you are trying to recover could have been reserved as a recovery area. In other words, some manufacturers designate part of the HDD to a copy of the basic OP system in case you need to reinstall windows.

Not only does this save them money by not having to send disk to the customer, the computer always has an available OP system recovery disk at your fingertips. Manufacturers like Dell and even software manufacturers like Microsoft are trying their best to get the OP system disk out of the hands of the customers to suppress piracy of their systems.

On most of the systems I've seen, the recovery files are hidden behind a separate partician to avoid someone deleting the files by accident. It's not a big deal if you have a large HDD, but if you are limited on space, it can be a bit frustrating to see all that space and not be able to use it.

 

I don't think this has anything to do with the question here. He has 21GB of un-partitioned space on his hard drive and wants to know the right way to go about partitioning it so that he can use it. This has nothing to do, as far as I can see, with a Recovery partition.

 

Thanks once again for the replies guys.

Indeed I doubt it has to do with system recovery, and even if it did I would still not require it as I have the XP disk, and everything backed up like a good boy.

Any more for any more?

 

It seems that the only option available is to create a new Primary Partition - I just did a test and found this to be the case on my machine. I had previously posted, in this space, a possible scenario to use, however it turned out to be in error. Hopefully, nobody read the original post before I fixed it.

 

Phew! Since yours was the first reply I received it in my mail inbox and almost did it. Good job I came here then. So what u said won't work hey? I'm a bit stumped. It just seems such a waste to have 21 gig empty space, especially when I use large amounts of audio samples in my work.

Of course, any further comments from ANYONE are massively welcomed. Thanks again.:major

 

Is you current extended partition the size of your two logical partitions or does it have the 21Gb of free space inside it. If the former case, I think you may need to increase the extended partition first, create the new logical partition and format.

Also you should consider using a dedicated third party utility for partition work. BiNG is free and is run from a dos diskette.

Lastly, prior to doing any partition changes/work, make sure you copy and valuable data. You have been warned.

Good Luck

 

I believe there's a mis-understanding here. Where prometheos refers to his "previously posted" comments, he's referring to his advise to create a logical partition. Then, he corrected himself to say that that advise was not correct but that you can create a primary partition. Am I interpreting these posts correctly?

 

G'morning!

So I decided to just bite the bullet and create a 'primary partition' since it WAS the only option available I just figured..."what's the worst that could happen".
Anyway, it's now formatted with NTFS and working beautifully, so there's no need for any more replies now.
And a BIG thank you for everyone who did reply. :major