Hi I have a question. I have a WD 320GB hard drive in my pc that I have installed windows and all my games onto and it is my primary hard drive for booting, page file etc. I recently installed a new WD 640GB hard drive for storage of all my media, photos, documents etc. I noticed in the disk management section that the primary 320GB hard drive was set to active and was wondering do I also make my second hard drive active? What does it mean for a HDD to be active?
Setting Hard Drive to Active
- Thread starter luigi336
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You dont want the 2nd hard drive active. That is a Windows based drive attribute given to the system drives. The one that is stated as active is the one that Windows recognizes as being the system drive that the files are stored to. If you also made the 2nd one active you could create issues.
It isnt like that. It is hard to explain outright.
It isnt that you could just inactive it. The active drive is the drive that is seen as the boot drive. So if you put the other drive to active you will lose your boot.
Then it would be a pain staking process to go thru to get your boot back up to where you want it.
It isnt that you could just inactive it. The active drive is the drive that is seen as the boot drive. So if you put the other drive to active you will lose your boot.
Then it would be a pain staking process to go thru to get your boot back up to where you want it.
oldskool
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I think what Mak is saying, is there can be only one active primary partition on a computer. That will be the partition that the system boots from. A configuration of two active partitions would conflict with each other. If the OS will even let you set two partitions to active, not sure. But anyway, keep only one partition as the active one.
An alternative would to be to make your disk a dynamic disk rather than a basic disk. But be warned, it is much easier going from basic to dynamic rather than dynamic to basic.
The point I am making is you could switch from basic to dynamic if you are going to use more than 4 partitions. By switching to a dynamic type disk, you can have an "unlimited"
number of "volumes", which is basically similar to partitions on a basic drive but they are distinctly different in concept and practice.
Trying to not be too wordy or off-point, but if all you need is data on one partition and apps, OS, etc. on the other, just stay with a basic type disk, partition according to your plan, and keep only one partition as the active one. Heed Mak's warning !
An alternative would to be to make your disk a dynamic disk rather than a basic disk. But be warned, it is much easier going from basic to dynamic rather than dynamic to basic.
The point I am making is you could switch from basic to dynamic if you are going to use more than 4 partitions. By switching to a dynamic type disk, you can have an "unlimited"
number of "volumes", which is basically similar to partitions on a basic drive but they are distinctly different in concept and practice.
Trying to not be too wordy or off-point, but if all you need is data on one partition and apps, OS, etc. on the other, just stay with a basic type disk, partition according to your plan, and keep only one partition as the active one. Heed Mak's warning !
I think something was ost in translation oldskool. i have two separate hard drives. If you go into the disk management area on vista where you partition format etc. It shows you your HDD and what they are used for such as boot, pagefile, etc. Now I installed a second hard drive yesterday. It still shows the original hard drive as being used for boot page file and all the other stuff, the only thing i changed after installing the new hard drive was setting it to active just like the original hard drive. not sure what the setting does and want to make sure i didn't mess something up.
oldskool
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Yes, I do believe you can have two seperate active partitioned drives on your system, as long as each drive only has one active partition on it. I would suggest waiting to see what Mak or another person says, as I am not totally 100% sure.
Also you would have to configure one of these drives to be the boot drive in the BIOS because during startup the computer would see two active drive partitions. Good luck !
Also you would have to configure one of these drives to be the boot drive in the BIOS because during startup the computer would see two active drive partitions. Good luck !
Alright let me try to clear this up and make it as understandable as possible.
Having multiple drives gets thigns a bit confusing. I will show you my setup:
You will notice i have 3 Hard drives. The first set of hard drives is my OS Drive. Vista, Win7 and the last 2 are the Swap and files for Kubuntu.
But notice how every drive on there is considered Active. This is because each one is technically active at one point or another. But the major thing to know is where the BOOT part falls. Cause that is what controls the boot. Mine is with my Win7 drive. So if i were to format that partition i would lose my boot.
Now my music drive is active as well as teh Storage drive. While the Pics, Docs and Data are not active.
Yet everything functions correctly as it should. There can be only 4 Primary partitions in use on any hard drive. From there they go to Extended and Logical Partitions.
Now the thing is if i wanted to install say XP to any of the 3 that are not active i could not. The partition has to be active for a OS to be installed to it but the partition doesnt have to be active to be used properly.
Like i said it is realy tough to just give a definate answer cause there really isnt one. The Active partition also helps the BIOS see the drive. So i oculd use my BIOS to boot from with the F12 option.
Start>Right Click on Computer (Or My Computer in XP) and select Manage. From there choose teh Disk Management option on the left. Post that screenshot. I will tell you if you are in any danger of causing your system not to reboot properly.
Basicaly the best i can say is that the Active designation is used by both Windows and the BIOS to show drives that can either be a.) recognized by the BIOS and used for Boot or b.) recognized by the BIOS as a drive that could be used for the install of a OS.
That is probably the best way i can say it.
Having multiple drives gets thigns a bit confusing. I will show you my setup:
You will notice i have 3 Hard drives. The first set of hard drives is my OS Drive. Vista, Win7 and the last 2 are the Swap and files for Kubuntu.
But notice how every drive on there is considered Active. This is because each one is technically active at one point or another. But the major thing to know is where the BOOT part falls. Cause that is what controls the boot. Mine is with my Win7 drive. So if i were to format that partition i would lose my boot.
Now my music drive is active as well as teh Storage drive. While the Pics, Docs and Data are not active.
Yet everything functions correctly as it should. There can be only 4 Primary partitions in use on any hard drive. From there they go to Extended and Logical Partitions.
Now the thing is if i wanted to install say XP to any of the 3 that are not active i could not. The partition has to be active for a OS to be installed to it but the partition doesnt have to be active to be used properly.
Like i said it is realy tough to just give a definate answer cause there really isnt one. The Active partition also helps the BIOS see the drive. So i oculd use my BIOS to boot from with the F12 option.
Start>Right Click on Computer (Or My Computer in XP) and select Manage. From there choose teh Disk Management option on the left. Post that screenshot. I will tell you if you are in any danger of causing your system not to reboot properly.
Basicaly the best i can say is that the Active designation is used by both Windows and the BIOS to show drives that can either be a.) recognized by the BIOS and used for Boot or b.) recognized by the BIOS as a drive that could be used for the install of a OS.
That is probably the best way i can say it.
oldskool
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I know this was Luigi's original post, but I would like to say that your response, Mak, was very clear. Thank you for sharing your knowledge with us.
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