Scribd
Upload
90 views2 pages

6 Logical Drives and Extended Partitions PDF

The document discusses logical drives and extended partitions. It explains that when more than four logical disks are needed, the first partition should be a primary partition and the second can be an extended partition containing the remaining disk space. An extended partition allows creating any number of logical drives within it, with the limiting factor being available drive letters. The document describes how extended partitions and logical drives are structured, with each logical drive containing a partition table pointing to the next logical drive.

Uploaded by

Darmoni Laishram
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
90 views2 pages

6 Logical Drives and Extended Partitions PDF

The document discusses logical drives and extended partitions. It explains that when more than four logical disks are needed, the first partition should be a primary partition and the second can be an extended partition containing the remaining disk space. An extended partition allows creating any number of logical drives within it, with the limiting factor being available drive letters. The document describes how extended partitions and logical drives are structured, with each logical drive containing a partition table pointing to the next logical drive.

Uploaded by

Darmoni Laishram
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
You are on page 1/ 2

Primary Partition. Extended Partition.

Logical
Drives
Logical Drives and Extended Partitions
When more than four logical disks are required on a single physical disk, the first partition should be a
primary partition. The second partition can be created as an extended partition, which can contain all
the remaining unpartitioned space on the disk.

A primary partition is one that can be used as the system partition. If the disk does not contain a
system partition, you can configure the entire disk as a single, extended partition.

Some computers create an EISA configuration partition as the first partition on the hard disk.

Windows NT detects an extended partition because the System ID byte in the Partition Table entry is
set to 5. There can be only one extended partition on a hard disk.

Within the extended partition, you can create any number of logical drives. As a practical matter, the
number of available drive letters is the limiting factor in the number of logical drives that you can
define.

When you have an extended partition on the hard disk, the entry for that partition in the Partition Table
(at the end of the Master Boot Record) points to the first disk sector in the extended partition. The first
sector of each logical drive in an extended partition also has a Partition Table, which is the last 66
bytes of the sector. (The last two bytes of the sector are the end-of-sector marker.)

These are the entries in an extended Partition Table:

The first entry is for the current logical drive.


The second entry contains information about the next logical drive in the extended partition.
Entries three and four are all zeroes.

This format repeats for every logical drive. The last logical drive has only its own partition entry listed.
The entries for partitions 2-4 are all zeroes.

The Partition Table entry is the only information on the first side of the first cylinder of each logical
drive in the extended partition. The entry for partition 1 in each Partition Table contains the starting
address for data on the current logical drive. And the entry for partition 2 is the address of the sector
that contains the Partition Table for the next logical drive.

The use of the Relative Sector and Total Sectors fields for logical drives in an extended partition is
different than for primary partitions. For the partition 1 entry of each logical drive, the Relative Sectors
field is the sector from the beginning of the logical drive that contains the Partition Boot Sector. The
Total Sectors field is the number of sectors from the Partition Boot Sector to the end of the logical
drive.

For the partition 2 entry, the Relative Sectors field is the offset from the beginning of the extended
partition to the sector containing the Partition Table for the logical drive defined in the Partition 2 entry.
The Total Sectors field is the total size of the logical drive defined in the Partition 2 entry.
If a logical drive is part of a volume set, the Partition Boot Sector is at the beginning of the first
member of the volume set. Other members of the volume set have data where the Partition
Boot Sector would normally be located.

For more detailed information see resource kits on Microsoft Developers Network (MSDN)

You might also like