What is extended partition

[DAGAN]

Hello , I have Read about extended partition at many places , create during installation of operating system , i have never created it , but i would like to ask what is extended partition and why we called is as a extended partition , it is differ from the logical or main partition , please help me thanks in advance

[Calvin K]

There are three kinds of partitions: primary partition, extended partition and logical drives. A disc can hold up to four primary partitions (only one can be active), or three primary partitions and one extended partition. In the Extended partition user can create logical drives (that is to say "simulate" multiple hard drives of any size).

[billyboybad]

An extended partition is a primary partition that has been divided up into logical partitions as a means of creating more partitions than the four that would otherwise be possible.

A partition is a logically independent section of a hard disk drive (HDD). A primary partition is any of the four possible first-level into which a HDD on an personal computer can be divided. Logical partitions are partitions that are created by dividing up the extended partition.

Only one primary partition can be used as an extended partition, and it can be created from any of the primary partitions. The logical partitions do not need to fill the entire extended partition.

The sizes of the logical partitions are described at the beginning of the extended partition, not in the master boot record (MBR). The MBR is is a small program that is executed when a computer begins to boot up (i.e., start up) in order to find the operating system and load parts of it into memory.

[MrChris-]

logical drive is the Windows system partition and extended partition is partition that contains data. A partition is part of a physical hard disk that can be used for an operating system. A physical disk can contain up to four primary partitions (or three if it contains an extended partition). A primary partition can not be subdivided sub-partitions.

- Of the four partitions that may include a physical disk, there can be only one extended partition. It is not necessary to have a primary partition to create an extended partition.

- The logical drive is a sub-partition an extended partition a hard drive.

[Solomon]

A disc can have up to 4 primary partitions. These partitions are only recognized by the BIOS. This limit is very restrictive. To solve this limit, imposed by the architecture of the PC, extended partitions were developed . An extended partition is a primary partition among the possible four primary , which itself contains other partitions. They are not primary partitions. They may be regarded as secondary partitions. They are called logical drives. They may all have different characteristics, different sizes and different file systems.