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Install Win7 to Logical partition?

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6 replies

by gregrocker 1 view

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After installing Win7 to a second partition dual booted with XP, I notice in Disk Management that the Win7 partition is marked Logical Drive.

I have never installed an OS to a logical drive before. Is there any reason this is not desireable? Would some programs/utilities not recognize the partition as containing an OS?

Thanks.

6 replies

by seanferd

It needs to be a primary partition.

This wouldn't happen to be the fourth partition on the drive, would it?

by seanferd

Did you or Windows do that? No matter.

I would see Jacky Howe's post, or simply do it over, creating a primary partition, then installing.

by rob miners

you can install to a logical partition as long as there is an Active Primary Partition available to install a boot loader to.

As far as I'm concerned the best way to dual boot is to use seperate hard drives. Having said that if you are stuck with one hard drive it would be best to create a Primary Partition for each Operating System.

This can easily be achieved using Diskpart with a fresh drive.

You can have four Primary Partitions.
By replacing one of the four Primary Partitions with an Extended Partition, you can then make an additional 24 logical Partitions within the Extended Partition. The table below illustrates this.

Partition Table

Primary Partition #1
Primary Partition #2
Primary Partition #3
Primary Partition #4 Created as an Extended Partition instead can house the Logical Partitions.
Logical Partition #1
Logical Partition #2 and so on...

Drives are allocated numbers and the Primary Disk is Disk 0. If you add a second Disk it will become Disk 1 and a third will be Disk 2......

by gregrocker

then after installing xp, used Vista installer to format D: and install Vista. only later did I notice it had made it a logical partition. I am going to do it over. I tried converting to Primary using Paragon but it slowed my Win7. sucks

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