Old School Disk Question

[Spidey]

I am installing a second drive (80gb) in a ME box, I just want to have drive “D” and “E” when I’m finished. (on the new drive)

These drives will not be booted from, and must be seen in ME.

Do I…

Create a primary partition & a secondary partition, leave them both inactive, and create a logicial drive in each….or

Simply create both logical drives in a primary partition.

I have partitioned and created drives in an older Win95 box, where I created a primary partition, made it active, then created a secondary partition, and created 2 logical drives in it. But I have never done this with a “second” drive.

[Jeff250]

You can't create logical partitions in a primary partition, only in extended partitions. If you're just using them for data and only need two, then it doesn't really matter if you create two primary partitions or an extended partition with two logical partitions. Just remember that in DOS primary partitions are always lettered before logical partitions.

[Spidey]

So if I want 2 drives, I “must” create 2 partitions.

The first one will become “D” and the extended one will become “E”.

Correct?

You said I can create 2 primary partitions instead of a primary and secondary?

[Krom]

Try partitioning and formatting it in ME, it should let you format the entire 80 GB in FAT (Windows 2000 and up won't let you format a FAT larger than 40 GB). Then it will just be a single primary partition as "D:". Unless you want to split it up into two partitions for some reason, in which case two primary partitions each using half the drive should be fine.

[Jeff250]

You said I can create 2 primary partitions instead of a primary and secondary?

I'm not familiar with the term secondary partition. Is this what Win Me calls something? If you want two drive letters, then you can mix it up however you want: two primaries, one primary followed by one extended containing one logical partition, one extended containing two logical partitions, etc. Just before you get too creative, remember that for purposes of DOS drive lettering, primary partitions always lettered before logical partitions. I suppose the term primary is a little misleading--keep in mind there can be more than one on a disk, and there doesn't even have to be one.

[fliptw]

Spidey would be creating two primary partitions.

The only valid terms for partitions types are primary, extended, and logical - its easy to think there would be a "secondary" partition type, because of there being one called "primary". Its a bad naming scheme, but ces't la vie.

[Spidey]

Sorry Jeff…I meant “extended” not secondary.

And thank you all...