Hi Everyone, Problem here. One of my HDDs started to throw SMART errors so i went ahead and bought a 2TB to save the data before the drive gives up the ghost completely. Now i just wanted to partition the sucker but Win7 doesnt let me create a 4th primary period. It would always create the 4th partition as a extended/logical instead? It never was a problem under XP as far as i remember. Any idea why it would do that? And more importantly; how can i convince it that i really, really, really want that 4th primary? I know i could always try a third party partitioner but if at all possible i would rather not install another program just for that. See screenshot for details...
Nope, not yet. (Also doubtful if that would make any difference since 'DiskManagement' is practically the GUI version of fdisk.) No, im not reinstalling the OS. Its just meant to be a data drive. (RAW Volumes are to be encrypted with TrueCrypt.) Normally it should. Thats why i dont quite get this...
Windows always creates 3 primary partitions and one logical partition on a blank drive - it's the way they built it since the Dos days. Unfortunalely you need a third party partitioner to create 4 primary partitions - Windows has no problems recognizing them. You can also try Terabytes BootIt NG software which somehow allows unlimited - well over 200 - primary partitions on any one drive - wierd huh ?
When you have 3 primary partitions and XX MB Of free space do this on windows 7: Run > Cmd Diskpart List disk [look what is your disk] Select disk X [where x is your disk, it will say it has XXX MB/GB free] create partition primary format FS=NTFS quick [optional] Assign Exit. Ready, is THAT simple.
Partitioning under the GUI doesn't work that way - have become so lazy I don't resort to the command line much anymore. I don't really understand why they restrict choice from the Disk Management GUI app. I always found Acronis could partition a drive and use more of the space than M$ fdisk or diskpart - the M$ tools always seemed to leave amounts of free space while Acronis didn't seem to.
@ Rosco: I saw there was another post from you but you seem to have deleted it again. You solved the problem?