Only three primary partitions?

Question

As everyone probably knows, Windows allows a drive to have four primary partitions, one of which may be active. However, I have only three primary partitions. I shrunk one and created a fourth partition so I could install Windows 8 on it, but Disk Management only allows it to be a logical partition.

Why might this be the case? If I cannot convert it to a primary partition, is it advisable to install Windows on a logical partition?

Solution 1

There's no problem whatsoever installing Windows in a logical partition, although obviously the System Reserved boot partition needs to be a primary one. AFAIK Disk Management does not allow the creation of 4 primary partitions. This is because the MBR partitioning scheme allows at most 4 primary partitions, or 3 primary and 1 extended partition. If you created 4 primary partitions, you would be stuck and would not be able to create any more partitions without deleting an existing one. I believe the only way to create the 4th primary partition in Windows is by using DiskPart from an elevated command prompt.

Solution 2

What I experienced says to me that "System Reserved" partition will do nothing and when you remove it your computer will not run into any problems. (This is what I've done to my PC and didn't had any problem)
So what I suggest you is to simply remove the first partition then create a new, then you will have 4 "USABLE" partitions.
I wish I could help others.
Regards.

Comments

[Manoj Agarwal]

You may make the new partition as data partition and install windows 8 on existing data partition.

[kreemoweet]

Never heard of a Disk Management limit to 3 primaries. Fact is, Disk Management on my Vista install is showing my Disk0 as having 6 (six!) primary partitions. Guess that's why D.M. has an iffy reputation.

[Karan]

@kreemoweet: DM might not be as feature-rich as 3rd party dedicated partitioning utilities, but I've never yet seen it misreport what exists on disk. More than likely your disk is using the modern GPT scheme (successor to MBR), which allows for up to 128 primary partitions since it uses 64 bit disk pointers.