>1 – <font color=green>“..is extended partitions just for multiple o/s's?..”</font color=green>
- I believe everybody is free to use extended partitions for <b>any</b> purpose. For example, for some reason it is possible to have primary active partition C on a harddrive as a system partition with only boot files (NTDETECT.COM, NTLDR, BOOT.INI) on it. And these files may occupy less than 0.25 MB, that’s it. But the hardrive might have on the extended boot partition D the rest: WinNT directory with system files, and also all programs installed, page file, etc.
>2 – <font color=green>“…i have been trying to find out about the use of extended partitions and all i could get was that no more than 4 primary partitions can be present without an extended partition? i know this is wrong (or half wrong) because i made about six partitions with nt and the computer still works. is that rule just for multiple boot o/s's or is there something else i'm missing? what is the purpose of an extended partition?”</font color=green>
- Are you sure you that you have made with NT about <b>6 partitions</b> on a single harddrive? <b>6 primary partitions</b>? Or <b>5 primary</b> partitions and <b>1 extended</b> partition? Not taking into account logical drives inside extended partition? That 4-partitions limitation from the basic drive configuration, you mentioned, is always applied to primary and extended partitions on the same harddrive, not to logical drives. Therefore it doesn’t have sense to count the number of logical drives there, the Alphabet would be the only possible limitation there. Anyway, I don’t know, I haven’t tried anything but the Basic Drive Configuration.
The purpose of an extended partition, I think, the same as for a primary partition, but we can have only a primary partition as active and system. So, the purpose is almost the same, no matter single or multiple boot, boot partition, or program partition, or just storage space for files, or page file location, or just free space, or.. whatever you want in combination of all above. It's up to you to configure your harddrive the way you desire for better performance or better organizing the space.
if you have a large harddrive, I would recommend to install WinNT into a separate system/boot primary active partition and make an extended partition as your program partition. But just couple weeks ago I heard from our System Administrator that some programs (Oracle 8i, actually) are slow if they are installed on a separate from boot partition with WINNT folder. Now from what I could compare, it looks like true for me with WinNT and Win2000.
So, read more about different issues with partitioning on WinNT: <A HREF="http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/Q224/5/26.ASP?LN=EN-US&SD=gn&FR=0&qry=partition&rnk=32&src=DHCS_MSPSS_gn_SRCH&SPR=NTS40 " target="_new">http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/Q224/5/26.ASP?LN=EN-US&SD=gn&FR=0&qry=partition&rnk=32&src=DHCS_MSPSS_gn_SRCH&SPR=NTS40 </A> .
By the way, the example of <b>the Basic Drive Configuration</b>:
1st condition: Max 4 primary partitions, NO extended, only one partition can be active.
2nd condition: 3 primary partitions + 1 extended with logical drives; only one primary partition can be active.
3rd condition: 1st primary active partition + 1 extended partition (with logical drives up to max letters available); we can’t create more extended partitions, only primary partition(s).
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