HDD's & Active Partitions

  • Thread starter Thread starter Barbara
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Barbara

Hello,

I have a clone running XP Pro.

I have two physical IDE hard drives in it.

Both drives contain just one partition each utilizing 100% of each hard
drive's space.

Drive C: [drive 0, partition 1], is NTFS, it is set active.

Drive D: [drive 1, partition 1], is FAT32, it is also set active.


Question: Can both partitions being set active cause any problems?

I recently used a partitioning management program to set drive 1 partition 1
[drive D:] as not active.

I'm hoping I didn't do something stupid.


Question: Also, without such a HDD management software, is there a quick and
easy way to set a partition as active/not active - especially "not" active
since a simple FDISK can mark a partition as active?

I have no idea how my secondary drive got set to active. I installed it as a
secondary device right out of the box.

Thanks for any help,

Babs
 
Barbara said:
Hello,

I have a clone running XP Pro.

I have two physical IDE hard drives in it.

Both drives contain just one partition each utilizing 100% of each hard
drive's space.

Drive C: [drive 0, partition 1], is NTFS, it is set active.

Drive D: [drive 1, partition 1], is FAT32, it is also set active.

Question: Can both partitions being set active cause any problems?
No

I recently used a partitioning management program to set drive 1 partition 1
[drive D:] as not active.

I'm hoping I didn't do something stupid.
Click to expand...

You will not be able to boot from drive 1
Question: Also, without such a HDD management software, is there a quick and
easy way to set a partition as active/not active - especially "not" active
since a simple FDISK can mark a partition as active?
Click to expand...

It is easy to set a partition as active. It is much more difficult to set all partitions inactive with a Microsoft OS. If you set another partition as active all other partitions on the drive will be set as inactive because only one partition on a physical drive can be active.
I have no idea how my secondary drive got set to active. I installed it as a
secondary device right out of the box.
Click to expand...

With many utilities if you partition a drive the first primary partition will be active by default.
 
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