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GParted forum → Live Media → How to use an extended hard drive
Hey guys I'm trying to dual boot with the Win7 Beta and since I already have four primary partitions, it says that I need to make an extended partition In order to create a new partition. So is there any way to create an extended partition with the GParted Live CD? Thank you for any help you guys can offer.
Hi!
Of course you ca craete an extended partition using GParted - but only if you already have a maximum of three primary partitions on the drive.
Your hard drive contains a partition table that can hold data about a maximum of four partitions, no matter if they are primary or extended. Thus, to create an extended partition, you need at least one free entry - which means that you must not have four primary partitions on the drive.
As a result, you must delete one primary partition to be able to create an extended one.
Hi!
How to proceed ?
Since all Windows versions up to now need a primary partition for their installation, you have to free TWO primary partitions : one for Windows 7 and the other for an extended partition, which then gets two of your present primary partitions as logical volumes. I don't know, how big your harddisk is, but you need much free space to temporarily store two partition images, until you reorganized your partitions. Perhaps you better use "Clonezilla" for that purpose, because it doesn't store empty blocks as does "Geparted". Of course, you can also use an external harddisk as storage media.
You cannot move a partition with another working Windows version to an extended partition, because it would receive a new drive letter. But of course you can move pure data partitions. To give a more detailed advice, I need information about the present structure and content of your harddisk.
Regards
cmdr
I have a Dell laptop with about (I think) 250GB of hard drive. I have partitions on my drive that were put there by Dell, so I really don't want to delete them. So is there any way to move one of Dell's partitions to an extended partition so that I can make a new primary partition for my Win7 install? Thank you for your help.
Hi!
In theory, you can move these partitions to an extended partition the following way:
1. Create an extended partition (you'll need to delete one primary partition first!).
2. Use GParted's "Copy" function to clone the "Dell" partitions into the extended partition.
3. Delete the "Dell" partitions.
However, I would not recommend doing this, simply because these partitions have a purpose (otherwise Dell wouln't have put them there). What I've often seen in the past is a "hidden" partition on the hard drive that contains recovery data for the system - you can boot off a recovery CD, this CD will be able to access the ghiodden partition, read the data stored there, and use it to revert the system's hard drive to the state it was in on delivery. However, these recovery CDs often depend on having the recovery partition in a well-defined position, so if you move this partition to another place, the recovery will likely fail.
Okay thanks, I'll try that. One of the Dell partitions was for my Dell Media Connect feature on my laptop, which I don't believe is all that important considering that I never use it, so I'll probably move that one. So thank you for all of your help. But I do have one more question: Is there a way to make a new drive (I mean with a different letter) so I can store my media there? Thank you guys for all of your help.
Hi!
Each "hard drive" (that you see in the Windows explorer, identified by a drive letter) is in fact a partition - either primary or logical. So to create a new "drive" with a new drive letter, you have to create a new partition and format it using a file system tha Windows understands (that is, NTFS and FAT12/16/32).
Please note that the drive letters assigned to your partitions are managed by Windows alone - they are not stored within the partitions! If you have two Windows installations on your (physical) hard drive, and your have an additional partition for your data, this data partition can be e.g. drive e: for one Windows installation and drive y: for the other...
Okay, I just checked and I saw that one of the Dell partitions was already under an extended partition, so how would I move one of my existing partitions under the partition that is already an extended one? Because I tried to copy it and I couldn't find a way to copy it under the extended partition. And, once again, thank you for all of your help.
To copy something in the extended partition, there must be unallocated space there. So, you need to resize/move other partitions, grow the extended partition and then copy what you want there.
A screenshot from GParted and the output of the command
fdisk -l (from the Linux terminal screen) can give useful information on the actual partitions. The documentation page and the GParted Manual show details.
http://gparted.sourceforge.net/documentation.php
http://gparted.sourceforge.net/manual/g … anual.html
GParted forum → Live Media → How to use an extended hard drive
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