hey guys, i bought a new 320Gig HD that i installed, made 2 partitions and installed WinXP on the 1st partition(100gigs). the 2nd partition i have to format but im wondering should the 2nd partition(with no OS) be set to Primary Partition or Extended Partition???? the 2nd partition is mainly gonna be downloaded data and maybe a few installed programs. thanks

You can have up to four Primary partitions. Beyond that you must use Extended partitions. Extended partitions offer no advantage that I can think of, and some disadvantages, so I'd do a second Primary partition. -Bob

When using WinXP you can reassign drive letters so there is no downside to a second primary. On Win98 the second primary would be assigned D:. This isn't always desirable. Bobthearch I would be interested in learning what disadvantages there are to an extended partition with logical drives.

[quote]Bobthearch I would be interested in learning what disadvantages there are to an extended partition with logical drives.[/quote] Probably not an issue for most users, but when setting up a multi-OS system, some operating systems will not boot from an extended partition. Best Wishes, -Bob

OK Bob, that is good to know. I have run dual boot system for some time but only use MS boot logger. I imagine a non MS product in the mix is a different issue.

FreeBSD requires a single Primary partion, which it divides into "slices". Solaris actually required *two* Primary Partitions, and they had to be on the Master drive. As I recall, QNX also requires a Primary partition for installation. Honestly it's been a while since I installed these OSes, so these examples may no longer be accurate. -Bob