What is Primary/Active/Logical Partition ?

[vrcatherine]

Hi,

I am completely new to this computer hardware stuff.

Please suggest me as what i need to do.

I have 2 SCSI hard drives on my IBM server.

"DISK1" and "DISK2"
36GB 36GB

I want both the disks (Disk1,Disk2) to work independently
(no raid,array,stripping), they should work just like
IDE drives.


DISK1 has been partitioned by name "C:\ 4GB " and
is named as IBM_PRELOAD where my windows 2000 server
operating system is loaded.(default by IBM)

I had partitioned the remaning 32GB on DISK1. ( E:\drive)

I had partitioned the DISK2 36GB (F:\drive).


Now here is the actual thing:


DISK1 === C:\ DRIVE ===4GB === HEALTHY SYSTEM

DISK1 === E:\ DRIVE ===32GB === ??????????

DISK2 === F:\ DRIVE ===36GB === ???????????


How should i format these E:\ & F:\ drive ???

Is it

Primary
Primary (Active)
Logical


This is what i did

DISK1 === E:\ DRIVE ===32GB === PRIMARY

DISK2 === F:\ DRIVE ===36GB === PRIMARY (ACTIVE)



And when i re-booted the system it gave me an
error "no operating system"

I am sure that i did something wrong.

Please let me know as how i should name the above
partitions.


--Thanks
Catherine

 

[rclarke250]

Well first off the active partition is your boot partition,it has to be c:. Second you want to make the second partition of drive 1 a logical partition. This way the os will see it as a seperate drive. And drive 2 can be set to primary non-active. This should do what you want, Or the best solution is to wipe the drives and start over with a clean install of the os. making drive 1 as a single 36GB drive and drive 2 as a single 36GB drive. I am assuming that the os and apps are going on drive 1 and data on drive 2? And you are using a tape backup? also make sure that in bootup in your bios scsi is set as the third option, floppy is first, and cd is second. Hope this helps. Rich

 

[vrcatherine]

Hi Rich thanks for the reply.

I wanted to do exactly like what you were saying.

Disk1 OS 36GB

Disk2 for my USERS data 36GB.


I will do a fresh OS install as what you have said.

Now here is the thing:

1)

IBM had sent me so many cd's with the new server
that i dont know what each and every cd does.

I first booted the system with some
SERVER SETUP CD.....
this cd basically prepares to
Install NOS and asks me about partitioning the drives.
And then prepares the whole system for windows 2000
installation and asks me for windows 2000 server cd later.



2) I had got the windows 2000 server cd with me
can i just put this cd and go ahead with the installation
like what you said.

C:\ 36 GB OS

And once the OS is loaded then i will format the DISK2
and make it Primary for 36GB.(e:\ drive)


Can do this ?

I still remember that when i using method (1) the
OS gets loaded with default partition of C:\ 4GB
or 8GB.

(Is there any limit for windows 2000 server that i
got to have a max of 4GB or 8GB for C:\ drive--system
partition)

I guess i had seen some error longtime in some systems
when i was making the system drive more than 7.8GB or 8GB
it gave me an alert saying that
"This partition is more that 1024 cyclinders and some
INT or operating systems cannot boot"


Is there any issue ????


Or you i can go ahead with your plan

c:\ 36GB OS DISK0 (healthy system--primary active)
e:\ 36GB primary


---Thanks
Cathy

 

[rclarke250]

Most certainly you can install just from the windows 2K installation and not use the cd's from IBM. It's what most people do. Mostly because it was the only way before,people as a rule don't like change, and most of us in the computer biz are control freaks about are stuff

For the rules on partition you can go here:

http://support.microsoft.com/defaul...port/kb/articles/Q138/3/64.asp&NoWebContent=1

Article 138364. or for the short answer, that 1024 cylinder rule was for win NT 4.0 and older. but there are other rules.
Rich

 

[vrcatherine]

Hi,


This is what i did:


I have put the first HOT-SWAP Disk1 and
installed the windows 2000 server
made only one partition C:\ 36 GB



and then after re-booting i had
plugged in the second SCSI hot-swap drive.

And formatted that as E:\ drive 36GB.

Re-booted it 2 times to make sure its
not swapping,mirroring..etc.

All seems well.

When i go to the computer management
this is what it shows me


DISK0 NETFINITYSP USERS (E
BASIC 55MB FAT 33.84 GB NTFS
33.90GB HEALTHY HEALTHY
(EISA Configuration)





DISK1 C:
BASIC 33.89 GB
33.89GB HEALTHY (System)




Is the above thing correct ?

 

[PeterGriff]

It sounds like you have done it (Usually you put the system on disk0, but win2k can cope with that). Double-check in Windows Explorer for both drives, and right-click and select properties to view the sizes.

Peter G