Changing Partition assignments

[Sarcastic]

if i have a primary partition and an extended partition, can i swith their assignments without losing data?

 

[bacillus]

what OS are you using?

 

[bonkers325]

no u cant
since u have a primary and extended

 

[bonkers325]

i dont know what u mean
are u referring to resizing the partition

 

[MCS]

Nope, Primary partitions are always labelled first eg C:, D:, E:, followed by the extended partitions in order of what drive they are on.

 

[4824guy]

Nope, it can't be done without a clean formatting.

 

[Sarcastic]

damnit not even with proggies like Partition magic?

 

[MCS]

Why do you want to do this? Perhaps we can help you find another way to achieve what you want?

 

[seind]

I used ranish partition manager, which can change the partitions you created. I have done it, BUT, BOTH of my partitions where PRIMARY. Just you it at your own risk if you do (you may loose all your info etc etc).

And yes, why do you want to do that???

cheers

 

[Sarcastic]

well i dont want to dual boot from the same hardisk. I figured if there was an easy way to change which partition to boot from than i wouldnt have to deal with the headache of dual booting from the same drive.

 

[MCS]

First off which is your OS on C: and which is the OS you want to dual boot it with? Is the dual boot already set up?

 

[SUOrangeman]

Anything is possible ... with the help of Linux (it's version of fdisk) or something that can write directly to the partition table.

What is your current partition layout and what EXACTLY do you want to do?

-SUO

 

[Sarcastic]

i want one partition to have win2k and one partition to have win98... does it really matter though? (Isnt that 99% of dual boot setups?)

 

[MCS]

Well thats way then. 98 has to reside on the Primary partition (C drive) but 2000 can go on ANY partition. So if you already have Win98 installed on C: then just install 2000 on D: or E: of whatever the partition is, doesn't matter if its on the Extended partion. Simple!!

 

[Sarcastic]

so how do i decide which partition to boot from. I thought it wasnt possible to boot from an extended partition.

 

[SUOrangeman]

Neither Win9x nor NT4/2K *have* to be on C:. They will need to access C: in order to write some boot information there. See my partitioning link below for way too much info on the subject.

Now, since both Win98 and 2K need to access C:, C: must be FAT16 or FAT32, and not NTFS (for natural dual-booting, without BootMagic or another boot loader). If C: is already NTFS, you will need a third-party program (like BOotMagic) in order to dual boot. If C: is only FAT32, you can boot the Win98 CD and run setup from there. Start the install with 'setup /ntldr' and put the Windows directory on D:\Windows.

-SUO

 

[MCS]

SUOrangeman - thanks for correcting me! I knew that really, honest

 

[Sarcastic]

thanks orange... btw how does ntfs compare to fat32?

 

[SUOrangeman]

I'll refer you to the MS KnowledgeBase (support.microsoft.com) for the NTFS vs. FAT stuff.

-SUO