Partitioning help

A

abcat

Distinguished Member
Hi,

I have a friend who have 2 more unallocated space partition from his disk management which is separated between other partition. When he tried to right click it, it only have the help option.

There is already 4 primary partition in his disk management which consist of 2 partition that is link with recover, 1 for vista and 1 for xp.

AFAIK, primary partition can only hold up to the max of 4 but how about other partition type like logical, I can't seems to create from there?

Is there anyway for me to help him create the partition so that he is able to store the data. Also, can I merge the two unallocated space into partition instead of separate partition? One more question to go, what is the difference between free space and unallocated space.

Please advise :smile:
 
You can have 4 primary partitions, or 3 primaries and an extended. In the extended, you can create as many logical disks as you want (up to the number of spare letters you've got, I think)
You'll have to turn one of your primaries into an extended before you can use the unallocated space, or expand your primaries to include it.
 
Terry60 said:
You can have 4 primary partitions, or 3 primaries and an extended. In the extended, you can create as many logical disks as you want (up to the number of spare letters you've got, I think)
You'll have to turn one of your primaries into an extended before you can use the unallocated space, or expand your primaries to include it.
Click to expand...

Oh I see :smile: Thanks for the explanation. So for instance:
The disk mangement shows:

Partition 1 (Recovery)
Partition 2 Unallolcated
Partition 3 Vista
Partition 4 XP
Partition 5 Unallocated

If different location of unallocated space, let say I delete away Recovery, I guess partition 1 and 2 can be merge but can I still create partition 5 partition or merge with Partition 1&2?

Thanks :smile:
 
In the example you give, you'll have to merge 5 in with XP to get use of it, but you can delete 1 and then create an extended partition including 1 and 2, and subdivide that into as many logical disks as you need.
If 1 and 2 are merged then you can make 5 a new partition because the total will be 4 again.
Either 1/2 or 5 will have to be an extended if you want futher logical divisions.
 
Vista's disk management should allow you to shrink or expand partitions in a few seconds.
 
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