Does an external USB hard disc need at least one primary partition ?

  • Thread starter Thread starter Jason Stacy
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J

Jason Stacy

I bought a new external hard disc which I plan to connect through USB in order to backup
some of my files/directories.

Before using I must create some partitions. Now I am wondering wether I need at least a dummy
primary partition on this hard disc.

Is this required or can I just put ONLY extended/logical partitions on this hard disc?

J.
 
Jason Stacy said:
I bought a new external hard disc which I plan to connect through USB in
order to backup
some of my files/directories.

Before using I must create some partitions. Now I am wondering wether I
need at least a dummy
primary partition on this hard disc.

Is this required or can I just put ONLY extended/logical partitions on
this hard disc?

J.
Click to expand...
You just plug an external hard disk into the USB port and use it.
If it's formatted in FAT32 I would recommend reformatting with NTFS.
Mike.
 
Mike:
I'm not sure what you even mean by a "dummy primary partition" re a USB
external HDD, however...

You never indicate how many partitions you're planning to create on that
USBEHD. Assuming you're not going to create more than four partitions, why
not simply create them as primary partitions?

There's certainly no "requirement" that the external HDD contain only
logical drives within an extended partition.

Assuming, for one reason or another, you need more than four partitions on
that external HDD, you could create three primary partitions, one extended
partition and then create as many logical drives as you need within the
extended partition.
Anna
 
Jason Stacy said:
I bought a new external hard disc which I plan to connect through USB in
order to backup
some of my files/directories.

Before using I must create some partitions. Now I am wondering wether I
need at least a dummy
primary partition on this hard disc.

Is this required or can I just put ONLY extended/logical partitions on
this hard disc?

J.
Click to expand...

You can do the latter only. That said, read "extended". Purpose is to
allow partitions beyond the 4 allowance of primaries on a hard drive. The
extended partition acts a "container" for the logical "drives" within it.
The PC must access the extended partition to seek the location of logical
drives within it. With primaries, its straightforward after it checks the
master boot record.

Bear in mind that the extended partition is part of the 4 count limitation
of primary partitions on hard drive. Thereby limiting to 3 primary
partitions and one extended partition.

Dave
 
Mike:
I'm not sure what you even mean by a "dummy primary partition" re a USB
external HDD, however...

You never indicate how many partitions you're planning to create on that
USBEHD. Assuming you're not going to create more than four partitions, why
not simply create them as primary partitions?

There's certainly no "requirement" that the external HDD contain only
logical drives within an extended partition.

Assuming, for one reason or another, you need more than four partitions on
that external HDD, you could create three primary partitions, one extended
partition and then create as many logical drives as you need within the
extended partition.
Anna
Click to expand...

Anna's right. Before XP and Vista, drives were given letter names --
i.e., D:, E:, etc. -- differently depending on whether they were
created in Primary or Extended partitions. Now that even Primary
partitions can be given any name you want by the OS, it probably
matters only if, as she says, you want to create more than 4
partitions. Even then, it shouldn't matter if one or more are
Primary. Right?
 
milleron said:
Anna's right. Before XP and Vista, drives were given letter names --
i.e., D:, E:, etc. -- differently depending on whether they were
created in Primary or Extended partitions. Now that even Primary
partitions can be given any name you want by the OS, it probably
matters only if, as she says, you want to create more than 4
partitions. Even then, it shouldn't matter if one or more are
Primary. Right?
Click to expand...

You can have up to 4 primaries, BUT if you manage to set more than 1 as
active, THEN the odd things start to happen.
 
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