[jaclaz]

Petr said:

So here is the resulting rule for disk ordering:
- the first primary partition on every disk
- logical drives in the first extended partition on every disk
- the second primary partition on every disk
- logical drives in the second extended partition on every disk

With all due respect to Petr and all others, the topic has already been "talked to death" in the threads I referenced in my previous post, in which you can find links to the MS knowledge article for DOS lettering:
http://support.micro.../kb/51978/en-us
that remains the same also for DOS 7.1 (Win98)

The idea of having multiple primary partitions did not even "touch" the minds of MS programmers at the time, and this is why the original fdisk won't allow the making of any primary partitions besides first one.

Starting from NT, the possibility of having multiple primary partitions was taken into account, and lettering works as detailed here:
http://www.jsifaq.co...ip.aspx?id=0288
http://www.dewassoc....riveletters.htm

Due to the different way letters are assigned, the possibility of creating a "tower of babel" in drive lettering when dual-booting between DOS/WIN98 and NT/2K/XP is concrete if you have multiple primary partitions with filesystems recognized by DOS/WIN98.

Finally, with XP there is also this possible (though not really common) problem:
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?...kb;en-us;307079

I completely fail to see the reason of the need of having TWO extended partitions on the same disk, and thus increasing the complexity of the problem.

Can someone explain WHY one should want such a setup?

jaclaz

[Petr]

jaclaz, on Nov 3 2006, 01:17 PM, said:

I completely fail to see the reason of the need of having TWO extended partitions on the same disk, and thus increasing the complexity of the problem.

Can someone explain WHY one should want such a setup?

I prefer to verify everything myself. Thank you for the MSKB article, it is good to see that in reality is everything like described in it. And two extended partitions - it was just test and proved that it does not work well. You never know what will creative users do on their HDDs. :-)

Petr

[jaclaz]

Petr said:

You never know what will creative users do on their HDDs. :-)

Yep , as Douglas Adams put it:

Quote

A common mistake that people make when trying to design something completely foolproof is to underestimate the ingenuity of complete fools.
Douglas Adams

but on the other hand, curiosity is what keeps people alive:

Quote

"Life must be lived and curiosity kept alive. One must never, for whatever reason, turn his back on life."
-- Eleanor Roosevelt

and as mr. De La Palice
http://en.wikipedia....es_de_la_Palice

Quote

A quarter hour before his death,
he was still quite alive.

death must found one alive!



jaclaz

[E-66]

I've read thru the thread again including the links Jaclaz posted, and it all makes sense now. My mistake was creating multiple primary partitions on HD #1.

One question still remains however. After re-reading Jaclaz's post in the other thread: http://www.msfn.org/board/index.php?showto...mp;#entry463153 I see that it was his post where I read I could put XP on a logical partition and boot to it as long as the boot files are on a primary partition elsewhere.

Currently I have my system set up this way by using the drive letter assigning program shown in post #2:

Drive 1:
C: Primary, Win 9x
D: Logical
E: Logical

Drive 2:
F: Primary, XP (NTFS)

Since XP can be put on a logical drive, I guess I could also set my system up this way:

Drive 1:
C: Primary, Win 9x
D: Logical
E: Logical

Drive 2:
F: Logical, XP (NTFS)

Either way, the F partition isn't seen by Win9x since it's NTFS. My question is, which way is "better" ? On the one hand, putting XP on a logical partition means I wouldn't have to use the drive letter assigning program, but if I ever had a problem with HD #1 I wouldn't be able to boot to XP on HD #2 because it's on a logical drive, correct?

On the other hand, the drive letter assigning program seems to be working just fine, and by having XP on a primary partition I could still boot to it if I had a problem with HD #1. Again, correct?

Just trying to figure out which way is the best way to set things up.

This post has been edited by E-66: 03 November 2006 - 01:45 PM

[Petr]

E-66, on Nov 3 2006, 08:43 PM, said:

Drive 1:
C: Primary, Win 9x
D: Logical
E: Logical

Drive 2:
F: Primary, XP (NTFS)

Does it mean that Windows 98 SE assigns drive letter to NTFS partition? I supposed it is completely invisible? What is the result without the letter assigning program?

Petr

[E-66]

From Win98's point of view it doesn't assign a drive letter to the NTFS partition because it doesn't see it.

From XP's point of view, and without using the drive letter assigning program, XP would assign D: to the primary partition on HD #2 and I'd end up with this:

Drive 1:
C: Primary, Win 9x
E: Logical
F: Logical

Drive 2:
D: Primary, XP (NTFS)

[Petr]

E-66, on Nov 3 2006, 09:45 PM, said:

From Win98's point of view it doesn't assign a drive letter to the NTFS partition because it doesn't see it.

From XP's point of view, and without using the drive letter assigning program, XP would assign D: to the primary partition on HD #2 and I'd end up with this:

Drive 1:
C: Primary, Win 9x
E: Logical
F: Logical

Drive 2:
D: Primary, XP (NTFS)

OK, but XP is able to assign drive letters itself. I'm only not sure what will be the result of changing the drive letter of system disk. Do you think that the drive letter assinging program is able to tell to Windows XP installer what drive letter is primary partition on drive 2?

Petr

[E-66]

Petr, on Nov 3 2006, 05:27 PM, said:

Do you think that the drive letter assinging program is able to tell to Windows XP installer what drive letter is primary partition on drive 2?

This is how I did it: With only HD #1 connected I used the drive letter assigner program to "lock in" the names of the 3 partitions as C, D, & E. Then I connected HD #2 and installed XP. Early in the install process you come to the screen where you can check the option "I want to choose the installation drive letter and partition during setup." I checked that, and then later when I was presented with choices it showed C, D, & E as already being used so F was the first drive letter available to use for XP.

I'm not sure if that answers your question or not. It seems that the XP installer is able to "see" what the drive letter installer program did, and acts accordingly.

This post has been edited by E-66: 03 November 2006 - 05:55 PM

[jaclaz]

@All
FYI,
what I have ALWAYS done since the times of dual booting MS-DOS 6.22 and Windows NT4 is to follow the (good) advice from Gilles Vollant, the author of Winimage and Bootpart, i.e. to always make a SMALL FAT16 Primary partition at the beginning of each drive, this partition can be as small as a few Megabytes, all you need to have in it is:
NTLDR
NTDETECT.COM
BOOT.INI
IO.SYS
MSDOS.SYS
COMMAND.COM
AUTOEXEC.BAT
CONFIG.SYS
and all the DOS utilities one might need.

Of course the DOS files can be of the release that better suite you, nowadays 7.1 (Win98) or 8.0 (ME/XP).

With today's large hard disks, space taken is not really a problem, so lately I typically make this partition a little less than 1 Gbyte, as to have still a sufficiently efficient FAT16 filesystem and with enough space to install if needed a copy of Win2K or "reduced" XP for emergency purposes.

I do that on ALL drives, regardless if they will be first or second hard disks.

Then ALL operating systems go into their own Logical Volume inside extended partition, as said installing NT based systems into logical volumes is "normal", as well as any kind of Linux (yes, though a bit tricky Win98 CAN be installed on a Logical partition).

On drives that go as 2nd or 3rd, I simply hide the first (and only) Primary partition by setting it's identity in the Partition Table as 16 (Hidden DOS 16-bit FAT >=32M) instead of 06 (DOS 3.31+ 16-bit FAT >=32M).

If I have the need to use a hard disk that was set as 2nd or 3rd, as the 1st one, I simply unhide the Primary Partition wgen booted from the other system or from a floppy and it is already bootable to DOS.

As said here:
http://www.msfn.org/board/index.php?showto...mp;#entry233078
using Logical Volumes is in my opinion also a bit safer.

Since I found out about Grub4Dos, that can hide and unhide partitions at boot time and that can boot most operating systems by directly chainloading bootfiles rather than bootsectors, I don't even need any external program ike XFDISK.


@Petr
FYI, it is also possible to actually BOOT from a logical volume inside Extended partition, if you correct the "hidden sectors" value in first sector (boot record) of the volume.
More info here:
http://www.911cd.net/forums//index.php?sho...=17144&st=0
Depending on OS, your mileage may vary.

jaclaz

[Petr]

jaclaz, on Nov 4 2006, 12:06 PM, said:

@Petr
FYI, it is also possible to actually BOOT from a logical volume inside Extended partition, if you correct the "hidden sectors" value in first sector (boot record) of the volume.
More info here:
http://www.911cd.net/forums//index.php?sho...=17144&st=0
Depending on OS, your mileage may vary.

Yes, I've described this more than 4 years ago here: http://tech.groups.y...sl/message/2864

Petr

[Ludwig Von Cookie Koopa]

Another thing you can do is in the Bios you can set the drives before you go into Windows. IF your biois support this option.

Also about using outside programs to aline drives I would use this only if I need to use the D drive constantly.

About jumping in and out of DOS is another story. I think by the description it will work in DOS but you can't use the extra features. You could test the program while running windows to see if it works the way you want it to. Somebody needs to test this with a DOS program that loads items from multiple drives.

About this the extra partitian to the primary drive should have sloved the problem however in your case you have more then one.

[eidenk]

Petr, on Nov 1 2006, 11:17 AM, said:

It is not recommended to make more than one primary partition per HDD and Windows 98 SE FDISK does not allow to create them.

Sorry to dig out this old thread but this does not appear to be correct, at least not the first part of it.

Quote

A user may create either:

0-3 primary partitions, and some number of logical partitions; or

4 primary partitions

If you have 4 primary partitions, there is no more room in this scheme for creating additional partitions. This is so because one primary partition entry is required to describe the first extended partition, if applicable, which will contain all logical partitions.

http://partitionlogi...partitions.html

[jaclaz]

eidenk, do take a deep breath , and re-read the sentence.

"It is not recommended" does not mean "impossible".

It is perfectly possible to make up to 4 primary partitions on a disk, and if you use some particular MBR's you can even make MORE than 4 .

The point is that a number of Operating Systems (particularly different versions of DOS and Win9x/ME) were developed and tested with the assumption that only one Primary Partitions in the MBR.

Using these operating systems on multiple primary partitioned hard disks can lead, in particular occasions, to data corruption , unlless all partitions but one are "hidden" at boot time, that's the reason why it is "not recommended".

Programmers of tools like the original MS FDISK evidently thought that to be so serious as to include in the tool a mechanism preventing the creation of more than one primary partition.

Several other tools, including Freedos FDISK, do not have such a limitation.

Please re-read this:
http://www.msfn.org/board/index.php?showto...mp;#entry463153
and linked posts therein, where the matter is discussed.

jaclaz

[Ponch]

jaclaz, on Nov 3 2006, 02:17 PM, said:

The idea of having multiple primary partitions did not even "touch" the minds of MS programmers at the time, and this is why the original fdisk won't allow the making of any primary partitions besides first one.

I guess the idea was "1 primary partition, 1 OS, Microsoft's, stick to it".

jaclaz, on Apr 6 2007, 10:16 AM, said:

It is perfectly possible to make up to 4 primary partitions on a disk, and if you use some particular MBR's you can even make MORE than 4

Ranish Partition Manager and Boot Manager for instance can make and handle up to 31 primary partitions, but once you've booted, you only get 4 of them visible (could be including an extended and all it's logicals).
I also agree this is a strange reason to dig up a 5 months old thread.

[stax0711]

Quote

I think it is correct, Windows XP can be installed on logical drive in extended partition.

Sure but I think such a setup can cause problems, it's safer to have the system at C: and let a bootmanager hide other system partitions.

[jcarle]

The drive letters of drives using a FAT system is based on the following order:

Primary Partition of the IDE Primary Master (or SATA Channel 1)
Primary Partition of the IDE Primary Slave (or SATA Channel 2)
Primary Partition of the IDE Secondary Master (or SATA Channel 3)
Primary Partition of the IDE Secondary Slave (or SATA Channel 4)
Extended Partitions of the IDE Primary Master (or SATA Channel 1)
Extended Partitions of the IDE Primary Slave (or SATA Channel 2)
Extended Partitions of the IDE Secondary Master (or SATA Channel 3)
Extended Partitions of the IDE Secondary Slave (or SATA Channel 4)

The drive letters of drives using an NTFS system is actually controlled entirely by the NT HAL, which means that directly in windows, you can change the drive letter attributed to any drive.

Also, take note that although you can create more then one primary FAT partition, you will run into problems at some point or another. The reason that drive letters get attributed as I mentioned above is due to the fact that FAT was designed to have a single primary partition and a single extended partition. The extended partition can contain multiple logical partitions but the basis still remains that it's based around the primary/extended combo.

[jaclaz]

stax0711 said:

Sure but I think such a setup can cause problems, it's safer to have the system at C: and let a bootmanager hide other system partitions.

No, sorry, but the way you describe can potentially lead to much greater problems.

There is NO such thing as a "safer" way, as well as there is no "better" way, it all depends on what you need/want to achieve, but using third party bootmanagers, expecially if installed to MBR is, rather obviously, a deviation from "standard" and, as thus, can potentially lead to incompatibilities with other utilities that assume that the given "standard" is respected, statistically this is the MOST RISKY situation you can have.

On the contrary, more than 12 years of experience with NT based systems, confirm that installing on a logical volume inside an extended partition, as Gilles Vollant recommends:
http://www.winimage.com/bootpart.htm
keeping "standard" MBR and NTLDR, is a VERY safe way.

You might want to read this for further considerations:
http://www.msfn.org/...opic=33964&st=6

jcarle said:

The drive letters of drives using an NTFS system is actually controlled entirely by the NT HAL, which means that directly in windows, you can change the drive letter attributed to any drive.

Though this is possible, a word of WARNING is needed, changing the SYSTEM drive letter can (and will) render the system UNBOOTABLE.

If you ever want to attempt such, BEFORE doing it, do read this and related links:
http://www.msfn.org/...showtopic=90495

jaclaz

This post has been edited by jaclaz: 28 April 2007 - 06:23 AM

[stax0711]

Quote

On the contrary, more than 12 years of experience with NT based systems, confirm that installing on a logical volume inside an extended partition, as Gilles Vollant recommends:
http://www.winimage.com/bootpart.htm
keeping "standard" MBR and NTLDR, is a VERY safe way.

Doesn't start Windows with standard setup only from a active primary partition which is always C:. If so a system in a logically partition hasn't drive letter C:, doesn't that fuddle some applications or tasks. I'm missing probably some things here

[jcarle]

stax0711, on Apr 28 2007, 08:52 AM, said:

Doesn't start Windows with standard setup only from a active primary partition which is always C:. If so a system in a logically partition hasn't drive letter C:, doesn't that fuddle some applications or tasks. I'm missing probably some things here

Not at all, unless the software was poorly written and assumes the system drive is C: without actually verifying it, but that's strictly a software point of view, it does not affect the Windows environment per se.

[eidenk]

jcarle, on Apr 27 2007, 05:39 PM, said:

Also, take note that although you can create more then one primary FAT partition, you will run into problems at some point or another.

Which ones ? I have disks with 4 primary partitions since years and I haven't encountered any problems so far.

Quote

The reason that drive letters get attributed as I mentioned above is due to the fact that FAT was designed to have a single primary partition and a single extended partition.

Nonsense sentence.