Partitions - How many can you have and how safe are they?

Hi,

I have quite a few partitions drives on my laptop one for xp, another for Win 7, Win 8
and Ubuntu, So i can choose which one i want to boot into and use. All seem to work fine but i was wondering,
Is it safe to have as many Partitions as i have made here for them? How many can you have?


Thank You
Andy

As many as you like, I have 6 partitions currently on a dual boot system with an image partition, a test partition and a recovery partition..

If I need more Ill just create them. To me partitions are like protected folders, how many can you have? As many as you need...

The only real limit is number of primary partitions on a standard MBR (master boot record) which is 4, and after that you need to create an extended partition and from there you create as many logical drives as you like (within reason ).




Now in GPT (GUID Parttiton Table) can be up to 128 partitions..

Here's a breakdown and explaination..

windows - What is the maximum number of partitions that can be made on a hard drive? - Super User

Thank you and very helpful

I used to do that, until I lost several partitions that got changed to "Dynamic" somehow and I could not revert them. I even lost an entire drive that way, fortunately I was able to fix it with the old Partition Magic. After that debacle, I only allow one partition for every drive I have. But to be safe, I would not put any more than 2 partitions on any drive - Gateways and Asus laptops usually come partitioned with equal size partitions named "System" and "Data" - That's fine by me.

The only thing I don't allow are those partitions that contain the "Recovery partition" - I delete those immediately. What they don't tell you when you want to use those is that most of them require an install disk (which is not given to you with the system) - Although I have seen some recovery partitions which were Ghosted, but all those do are to install the OS the exact way it was when the PC or Laptop was new - Wild Tangent Games included, which are very difficult to remove.

Brooklin, that's an amazing partition map. If it works, great! I kind of get jittery with those though hehe

The main problem with multiple partition is that almost invariably one will end up being too small while another has an excess of space. Even experts get this wrong. It is possible to resize partitions after creation with third party utilities but this always carries with it an element of risk. You had better have a backup of all important data on all effected volumes. Folders do not have size constraints as space is allocated as necessary.

Of course multiple operating systems must have their own partition.

XweAponX said:

Brooklin, that's an amazing partition map. If it works, great! I kind of get jittery with those though hehe

Click to expand...

Ive heard about partitions becoming Dynamic then problematic, I guess Ive been lucky so far.. If I had a larger drive id like to experiment more, but i guess thatll have to wait a bit..

Im not too concerned about crashes though as this laptop is for testing theories and programs.

Theres nothing here ill miss if it goes belly up.. Ill start over from the image i created after everything was in place..

Now i want to try and force a dynamic change to see how it can be undone...

As much harm and many changes ive made to this OS, it still keeps going... I really believe the probs people are having with their Win 8 is caused by the UEFI.... Since this old dog doesnt have it...

Ive only had one glitch, and that was when I installed a taskbar replacement to try to truely hide the taskbar and it caused me to re-activate my windows! I uninstalled that quick....

As for resizing a partition on the same [DEL]drive[/DEL] as your OS, I say NO! extremely risky, its better to bring your drive to another computer and resize it from there..

Or use a self booting partitioning manager to do so..

Moving files that are in use by windows can have catastrophic results if interrupted..

Ive heard about partitions becoming Dynamic then problematic, I guess Ive been lucky so far

Click to expand...

I have no idea what this means, can you explain? I know about dynamic disk but that is something quite different and cannot happen spontaneously.
Multiple partitions should not in any way be less reliable than a single partition. The main problem is running out of space in one partition while others have more than enough.