Maximize the life and efficiency of windows XP on my Kingston 120GB A400 SSD

[Dave-H]

Thanks again, as I'm sure you're now well aware, I have only ever gone into the intricacies of disk partitioning at a very basic level!
So if I read your analogy correctly, extended partitions are like they're in a container, into which utilities like mbrwiz cannot read?
For some reason lost in the mists of time, I have always formatted my data drives as extended partitions, my only primary partitions are the system drives for Windows 98 and Windows 10.
Disk 2, the Windows 10 drive, was partitioned by Windows setup, and both partitions are primary. The Windows XP partition on disk 1 isn't, it's an extended partition.
Is there any disadvantage to the data drive partitions or the Windows XP partition being primary partitions, presumably as long as they're not set active?

 

Edited February 15, 2020 by Dave-H
Typo

[jaclaz]

Well, it depends.

Extended partitions are intrinsically "safer" from some risks (when compared to primaries), as an example a (malicious) tool with the same capabilities of MBRfix (and no more) won't find the actual bootsector of the logical volumes so - in theory - can do less damages.

On the other hand since logical volumes are addressed through a "chain" of EPBR's, thet are intrinsically "weaker", if any link of the chain breaks (for whatever reasons) you will have corruption (perfectly recoverable, still ...)

A good (and infamous) example is attempting to manage extended partitions from Vista or later in XP. the good MS guys not only created the mess when "switching formatting paradigm", but also mis- or under- documented the issue and of course never issued a proper XP patched set of programs, again JFYI:

http://reboot.pro/topic/9897-vistawin7-versus-xp-partitioning-issue/

http://www.dcr.net/~w-clayton/Vista/DisappearingPartitions/DisappearingPartitions.htm

And not only, they also removed the KB that mentioned the issue (via Wayback Machine):

https://web.archive.org/web/20080821212615/http://support.microsoft.com/kb/931854/en-us

By definition, out of the four partition entries, only one can be active at any time, and only if primary, so it is implicit that any primary partition but one will be non-active.

The (IMHO only) good news with GPT partitioning are that in GPT ALL partitions are primary and you have in practice no limit in the number of volumes (most implementations are for up to 128 partitions/volumes).

jaclaz

 

[Dave-H]

I love Microsoft's suggested workaround to avoid the problem.
Basically, just don't do it!
Thanks again @jaclaz, you've given me a lot to get my head around here, but that's what this forum is all about of course.
Cheers, Dave.

[jaclaz]

27 minutes ago, Dave-H said:

I love Microsoft's suggested workaround to avoid the problem.
Basically, just don't do it!

Sure , and wait until you find one where something (like not allowing to enter a number in engineering format) is by design, example :

https://web.archive.org/web/20090626230528/http://support.microsoft.com/kb/135673

the motive:

Quote

Considering that the location of the E key is directly below the top row of numeric keys, the potential for entering an E accidentally is too great to permit entering the format into a numeric field by default. This is by design.

would be not as stupid as it may seem at first sight if not for the fact that anyone (in his/her own mind) would use the numeric keypad (and not the top row) when entering numbers.

Or - IMHO even better - when Remove All Does Not Remove Everything (by design)

https://web.archive.org/web/20080217232953/http://support.microsoft.com/kb/147373

jaclaz