Question about HD Partitions

[kumarkumar]

I have three hard disks with two partitions in one of them.

I use WinXP Pro only.

I want to know what are advantages or disadvantages in terms of performance of Windows if I format a particular partition as "primary" as opposed to "logical"

Let me explain my question through two screenshots with two different cases (which are marked with red boundaries). This is about the particular partition H:. In Case 1 H: is formatted as Primary and in Case 2 H: is formatted as Logical.

Case 1 (H: is Primary)

Case 2 (H: is Logical)

Now what I want to know is in what way is Case 1 advantageous over Case 2

and vice versa?? Again by "advantage" I mean performance of Windows.

Also you can see from the screenshot that Disk 2 and Disk 3 are set as active. How do I make them non-active without having to format them??

[jaclaz]

Now what I want to know is in what way is Case 1 advantageous over Case 2

and vice versa?? Again by "advantage" I mean performance of Windows.

NO difference whatsoever.

Also you can see from the screenshot that Disk 2 and Disk 3 are set as active. How do I make them non-active without having to format them??

A "Disk" cannot be made active or non-active.

A Primary Partition on a Disk can.

A partition is made active by writing a value of 80hex as first byte in the corresponding partition entry in the MBR (at offset 446 if it is the First partition).

Though this can be done through any hex edtor capable of direct disk access, it is advised to use a more suitable app.

If you prefer a GUI app, use Beeblebrox:

http://students.cs.byu.edu/~codyb/

(you need to write 00 instead of 80 in the "Boot" editbox)

Otherwise you can use MBRwiz:

http://mbrwizard.tripod.com/

With something like

mbrwiz /Disk=1 /Active=1

AFTER you have made sure, with the /List switch you are changing the RIGHT HD and Partition.

jaclaz

Edited December 24, 2006 by jaclaz

[McTavish]

Question One: same answer as jaclaz, no difference in the slightest. Both are just sectors of the hard drive where data is stored. The only time you really need to give consideration whether to use a primary or logical would be for an OS, or if you were short on primaries.

Is there a reason why you want to remove the Active flag from the partitions on your other drives? Again, it will make no difference to you what-so-ever if they are marked active or not.

[kumarkumar]

jaclaz,

You are just great!!

Thanks a lot for the precise and prompt reply. This is exactly what I was looking for.

I feel so much relieved now.

Edited December 25, 2006 by kumarkumar

[kumarkumar]

McTavish,

Thanks for your prompt reply.

Is there a reason why you want to remove the Active flag from the partitions on your other drives? Again, it will make no difference to you what-so-ever if they are marked active or not.

Glad to hear that "it will make no difference to you what-so-ever if they are marked active or not".

Actually that would have been my next question. I got the answer even before I asked it. Thanks a lot.

No, there is no particular reason to remove the active flag. Just felt kind of uncomfortable with three active partitions in my PC, since I hadn't heard your reply before.

Edited December 25, 2006 by kumarkumar

[McTavish]

The first primary partition created on a drive will be marked as active. All it means is that this will be the partition the Master Boot Record on that hard drive will look on for an operating system if the computer tries to boot from that drive. As you don’t have an OS on that drive, and most likely not even any bootcode in the MBR, and it’s not the boot drive in the computer, then the active flag for that partition is meaningless and will never be needed or used or referenced by any software except for tools like partition magic when they examine the hard drive.

[kumarkumar]

All it means is that this will be the partition the Master Boot Record on that hard drive will look on for an operating system if the computer tries to boot from that drive.

Plz correct me if I am wrong.

Each Hard Disk has its own MBR..right??

The only MBR my computer ever utilizes is the one in Disk 0.

Now since I am not using Disk 1 and Disk 2 to boot any kind of OS (s), I can safely wipe out the MBR on those two Disks.

Edited December 25, 2006 by kumarkumar

[Ponch]

Now since I am not using Disk 1 and Disk 2 to boot any kind of OS (s), I can safely wipe out the MBR on those two Disks.

You would lose your partitions (D and E) on those drives well. And again, why do you want to do that ?

[kumarkumar]

ponch,

So are you saying that wiping the MBR is equal to wiping the partition??

I just hate unnecessary things (things which lie there never to be used at all) in my computer. Hence I wanted to get rid of that MBR on those two disks.

[i have in fact slipstreamed my Widows to 130MB with just the things that I need and got rid of all unnecessary junk]

Edited December 25, 2006 by kumarkumar

[McTavish]

The MBR is on the very first sector of the first track of the hard drive and it is reserved for the bootcode and the partition table. There is no file system on the first track and you can’t merge it into a partition – as partitions would not exist on the drive without the partition table. You could zero out any bootcode that might be in there, but there is no point. It’s tiny anyway- only about 400bytes. An icon on your desktop could be 50 times larger.

[kumarkumar]

Hmm.....thats right.

Now since you have mentioned, just for the sake of knowledge how do you "zero out any bootcode"??

And as you said this is not the same as erasing the MBR.......right??

[McTavish]

Well I've never done such a thing so don't know if there is any app around that can do it. MbrWiz will wipe the first sector or the first track, but that will be everything, including the partition table, so you don't want to try that. You would probably have to do it manually and use an editor to zero out each byte - being careful not to touch the PT or Disk Signature.

This page on Starmans site will show you the MBR and what each part is. If you go to his free tools page there should be a sector editor somewhere there. http://mirror.href.com/thestarman/asm/mbr/Win2kmbr.htm

Really, it's not worth the effort.

[Ponch]

You can do that with Ranish Partition Manager, it takes 2 seconds. Again, you better know what you doing before you begin. Boot with a dos disk, start Ranish, switch HDDs with F5 if you have more, use "E" on the MBR to erase it then rewrite the partition table before you save and leave. It won't change your life though.

[kumarkumar]

You can do that with Ranish Partition Manager, it takes 2 seconds. Again, you better know what you doing before you begin. Boot with a dos disk, start Ranish, switch HDDs with F5 if you have more, use "E" on the MBR to erase it then rewrite the partition table before you save and leave. It won't change your life though.

Let me try this....

How do I check if the bootcode is gone??

[McTavish]

Ponch….how do you rewrite the partition table? Does Ranish do it or have you to do it manually?

Your heading for wiped hard drive kumarkumar if you don’t know 100% what you are doing.