Gateway DX4320 Hardware Installation Guide - Page 50

Chapter 6: Setting up the New Drive Manually Creating the extended partition The extended DOS partition is a portion of a hard drive where non-system files can be stored. Your computer does not require an extended partition to function. The hard drive can have four primary partitions or three primary partitions and one extended partition. A logical drive is an area of the extended DOS partition that you can set up to group directories and files. You must set up an extended DOS partition before you can create a logical drive. You can create as many as 23 logical drives in an extended DOS partition. Primary Partition (C:) Logical Logical Logical Logical Drive Drive Drive Drive (D:) (E:) (F:) (G:) Extended Partition Hard Drive Because FAT32 lets your computer address up to 1 TB of drive space per partition and NTFS lets your computer address all of the drive space as one partition, you only need to make an extended partition when: ■ You choose to create more than one partition ■ The primary partition is created with another file system (Windows NT 4.0 users) Important The FDISK program is not available in Windows XP. A primary partition is created when Windows XP is installed on the hard drive. During the Windows XP installation process, you can also select the size and type of other partitions. If you leave any part of the hard drive unpartitioned, you can create the extended partition and assign logical drives by following the procedures "To create an extended partition using Windows XP NTFS:" on page 48 and "To create a logical drive using Windows XP NTFS:" on page 49. Although Windows XP can use FAT16 and FAT32 partitions, we recommend that you use NTFS for all partitions. 46 www.gateway.com