Primary Partition is a partition that is needed to
store and boot an operating system, though applications and user data
can reside there as well, and what’s more, you can have a primary
partition without any operating system on it. There can be up to a
maximum of four primary partitions on a single hard disk, with only one
of them set as active (see “Active partition”).
Active (boot) partition is a primary partition that has an operating system installed on it. It is used for booting your machine. If you have a single primary partition, it is regarded as active. If you have more than one primary partition, only one of them is marked active (in a given PC session).
Extended partition can be sub-divided into logical drives and is viewed as a container for logical drives, where data proper is located. An extended partition is not formatted or assigned a drive letter. The extended partition is used only for creating a desired number of logical partitions.
Logical drive is created within an extended partition. A logical partition is a way to extend the initial limitation of four partitions. An extended partition can contain up to 24 logical partitions (you’re limited by the number of drive letters and the amount of hard drive space available for creating drives; of course, it’s senseless to use 24 partitions on a system in most cases, because it will be a data organization nightmare). Logical partitions are used for storing data mainly, they can be formatted and assigned drive letters; their details are listed in the extended partition’s table - EMBR (Extended Master Boot Record).
The “fdisk” feature is at the same time not that easy-to-use; you should be an experienced PC user to implement partitioning of your hard drive. Still it’s free and is shipped together with the majority of operating systems.
Let’s analyze Gnome Partition Editor (GParted), for instance. It’s a Linux-based tool for newbies. The features it can boast include only create, format, delete, resize, copy, move and merge partitions. Plus it can change volume label. As you see the number of options is not that high and, once again, there is no guarantee that you’ll be able to access your data after carrying out the listed operations.
Thanks
R.karthikeyan
Active (boot) partition is a primary partition that has an operating system installed on it. It is used for booting your machine. If you have a single primary partition, it is regarded as active. If you have more than one primary partition, only one of them is marked active (in a given PC session).
Extended partition can be sub-divided into logical drives and is viewed as a container for logical drives, where data proper is located. An extended partition is not formatted or assigned a drive letter. The extended partition is used only for creating a desired number of logical partitions.
Logical drive is created within an extended partition. A logical partition is a way to extend the initial limitation of four partitions. An extended partition can contain up to 24 logical partitions (you’re limited by the number of drive letters and the amount of hard drive space available for creating drives; of course, it’s senseless to use 24 partitions on a system in most cases, because it will be a data organization nightmare). Logical partitions are used for storing data mainly, they can be formatted and assigned drive letters; their details are listed in the extended partition’s table - EMBR (Extended Master Boot Record).
Partition software
So to implement basic and advanced disk partitioning operations, you require special software. Here are possible tools you may use. You can read another article about partition recovery software too.Built-in partitioning utility
Most operating systems use the built-in “fdisk” command to create hard disk partitions. But this solution can’t be called reliable - you may lose your data. If you resize or merge partitions, or reinstall your OS with the number of partitions different from the initial one, data loss is inevitable. Everything will be erased totally.The “fdisk” feature is at the same time not that easy-to-use; you should be an experienced PC user to implement partitioning of your hard drive. Still it’s free and is shipped together with the majority of operating systems.
Free software
Free pieces of hard drive partitioning software have no guarantee of data integrity and have a minimum of backup features. Perhaps the most popular utilities are Gnome Partition Editor (GParted), Partition Logic and Cute Partition Manager. You can easily download them from websites.Let’s analyze Gnome Partition Editor (GParted), for instance. It’s a Linux-based tool for newbies. The features it can boast include only create, format, delete, resize, copy, move and merge partitions. Plus it can change volume label. As you see the number of options is not that high and, once again, there is no guarantee that you’ll be able to access your data after carrying out the listed operations.
Commercial software
To have the peace-of-mind performing hard drive partitioning tasks, you need to possess truly powerful partition managers. You’ll have to pay , but you’ll obtain reliable, fast and easy-to-use partitioning software with a wide range of features. Here are the market leaders:- Acronis Disk Director
- Norton Partition Magic
- Paragon Partition Manager
Thanks
R.karthikeyan
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