Partitions

[Race]

After installing a second 40 gig hard drive, I created two 20 gig partitions.....drives F and G. They are both set as primary drives. I read where you should only have one partition set as primary per drive.....or is it one primary drive per system? Is this true? There seems to be no problems. If I need to change it....drive G has data/games on it and drive F is clean, so what would be the best way to do it without losing the data on G? Obviously, if the data was on drive F, and G was clean...I could just extend drive F. (My original HD is set to primary (system) with no partitions).
Thanks for any tips....

 

[Comtech]

If it works, don't fix it.
In Win9x, your system could have trouble, in 2k/XP it doesn't matter.
Because of the way an NT based system loads, you don't even need an active partition to run windows. Cheers,
Jim

http://members.cnx.net/reboot/

 

[pmonett]

Comtech is right, if it works, don't change anything.
But for the record, the primary/secondary is relative to the IDE channel (= the cable) you are using.
Each IDE channel accepts two devices max. If only one peripheral is connected (HD or CD-ROM), it should be Master (primary). If two are connected, one HAS to be Master, the other Slave.
Sometimes people talk about using CS (cable select). I understand that this is an obsolete specification for old motherboards. Modern equipment understands and works fine with Master/Slave settings, CS is not to be used.

 

[wolluf]

You can have up to 4 primary partitions on each hard drive - windows (even 9x/ME) will be quite happy (I have this set up).