Mail Archives: opendos/2000/10/27/10:41:09
You will need to use an intelligent FDISK such as Linux fdisk, cfdisk, etc.
or DRDOS FDISK. I do not recall if you can do it with DRDOS FDISK 7.02 and
earlier or not. You can with DRDOS v 7.03. Use FDISK /X so you can use the
extended functions.
As for what is best, it will depend on your system and what OSes you wish to
use. Some OSes such as Linux and OS/2 Warp, do not care whether they are
located in a primary or extended partition. There are restrictions though.
You may only have a maximum of four primary partitions per drive. If you
want logical drives in an extended partition, you can only have a maximum of
three primary partitions. You can only have one extended partition per
drive. Some OSes have a limit as to the maximum partitions you may have per
drive and/or total. MS for example has a maximum of 24 partitions. I am not
certain if there is a maximum number for logical drives for MS crap or not.
I know that Disk manager (at least the version I used many years ago) had a
max of 16 partitions per drive and a total of 24. The 24 is because there
are only 24 letters in the alphabet and A: and B: are reserved for floppy
drives. However, Novell NetWare has additional dedignations for drives that
allows more than 24 partitions total.
Sometimes I just put filesystems into primary partitions so I can change
them and to boot from them directly instead of through a boot manager. I put
LILO boot mamager in a primary ext2 partition instead of the MBR. WIBDOZE
screws with the MBR, so I like to screw WINDOZE and make MY system MY WAY!
I set up Linux different than a lot of people seem to like to set it up. I
use a small primary partition for the Linux root directory so that I can
easily back it up with tar. Then I use all the other Linux partitions (/usr
/usr/src /local /temp, etc.) on other partitions. I do this to make backups
easier to deal with. When I get one of those 5.2GB DVD RAM drives, I'll
probably change a lot of that. Right now I only have a 250MB tape drive and
most of my tapes are 150MB. I use a backup program with data compression for
all the other partitions.
I like to keep FAT 16 partitions to under 256MB to eleiminate slack space.
I fool around with a lot of different OSes, so I like to have plenty of
primary partitions available. Most people only really need one primary
partition. however, people that like to run different DOSes, need more than
one primary partition if they wish to be able to switch to another DOS
easily.
If you have an older version of OS/2 (before WARP 3) and wish to boot more
than one OS, you have to install it on a primary partition. (At least that
is what it said when I installed Linux.) All DOS each must use a primary
partition. WINDOZE 9x/ME/NT/2000, OS/2 WARP 3 and later, Linux, and many
other OSes can use logical drives in an extended partition. However, people
having older mother boards with older BIOS have a limit of 1024 cylinders in
which you may boot from. So often times people will make small primary
partitions so that the boot files needed to boot the OS will be within the
first 1024 cylinders of a drive. For example. a lot of people make a small
primary partition for the Linux /boot directory of about 8MB and install
LILO in that boot record and make sure thst the entire partition is within
the first 1024 cylinders. The OS/2 boot manager or any other boot manager
must be within the first 1024 cylinders. In later BIOS, you do not need to
worry about this. many people are still using 286/386/486 machines and most
of these BIOS have this limitation. Many of the Pentium I and II system may
also have this limitation. It would cost more to update these BIOS than it
would cost to get a good late model new or used motherboard.
I don't know what the limitation is on my BIOS, but all my drives are less
than 1024 cyl or they lie to the BIOS and show less than 1024. Some people
even run much older systems such as 8088/80286 and would rather run DOS 3.3
on them. MSDOS 3.3 has a maximum size of 32MB per primary or logical drive.
Nobody I know uses MSDOS 4.0.) The reason they do this is because the system
files and many of the DOS files are much smaller and take less disk space.
Also at 32MB using DOS 3.3, the cluster size is 1 sector or 512 bytes and
has the lowest slack space, thus you do not need huge dives for these
systems. Unfortumately MSDOS FDISK made the lowest cluster size of 4 sectors
(2048 bytes) starting with DOS 4.0. You can get around this with some
utilities and make the cluster size 1 sector for 32MB partitions/logical
drives, 2 sectors for 64MB partitions/logical drives. FAT 16 is very, very
ineffecient. DOS requires FAT 16. There are some drivers and utilities to
use FAT 32 for DOS, but I have yet to find any really good ones and my DOS
utilities like Norton's and PCTools, will not work with FAT 32.
Pat
----- Original Message -----
From: <fernande AT internet1 DOT net>
To: <opendos AT delorie DOT com>
Sent: Tuesday, September 26, 2000 10:35 PM
Subject: Re: DRDOS FDISK
> How do you do 2 primary partitions? I usually do a primary and an
> exteneded and then make a logical DOS drive in the extended partition,
> but wondered if there were other/better ways to partition my HD.
>
> Chad Fernandez
> Michigan, USA
__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Talk to your friends online with Yahoo! Messenger.
http://im.yahoo.com
- Raw text -