What is the difference between a primary partition and an extended partition?
You can have up to 4 primary partitions, only one of which can be active at a given time. An extended is subordinate to a primary. There can be only one and it can contain logicals. So, if you have any logicals you have to have an extended and a Primary that houses logicals is actually an extended by definition. As an example: a hard drive with one primary and one extended, with two logical drives, would show three drives, C:, D:, and E: (assuming the CD or DVD drives weren’t lettered D: or E:) Think of extended and logicals as virtual and it might help you understand it better. It’s a way to get around the 4 primary limit. Other physical drives, like floppys or cd readers etc don’t have anything to do with partitions other than when it comes time to give them a letter. When you were setting up your linux, you will have had to at least create a primary linux and a swap. If you decided to get into extendeds, it would have been for back ups really.
