I am a real "newbie" regarding FDISK.   In the page:    http://fdisk.radified.com/

The following text appears:

The maximum number of Primary partitions allowed per hard disk is 4. Again, you will normally only have *one* Primary partition per hard disk. If you only have one hard disk in your system, then you will *need* a Primary partition on that drive. But, if you have more than one hard disk (two, three, four, etc.) in your system, you don't need any Primary partitions on the second, third, fourth (etc.) disks.

When I use "FDISK", it only allows me to create one Primary partition.  If I choose that option a second time, it replies "you already have a Primary partition".

If the maximum is 4 per hard disk, why can you only create 1?

Thanks, John

I've never had a need for more than one primary partition per disk, but I'm sure it can be done with Partition Magic:

http://www.powerquest.com/partitionmagic/pm7details.html

Another user mentioned configuring his system with multiple primary partitions. Perhaps you could ask him how he did it. See this thread:

http://radified.com/cgi-bin/YaBB/YaBB.cgi?board=general;action=display;num=1015447828

Partition Magic will allow you to create multiple primary partitions

You can also overcome the 4 primary partition (or 3 primary 1 extended with multiple volumes) by employing a boot manager like System Commander or XOSL (opensource freeware)

Use OSl2000 from WWW.osloader.com.
It is so simple and fool-proof.
You fdisk in one primary partition, and format it.
Instrall OSl2000, and then reboot and manually hide the first partition, and then you can fdisk in a second Primary partition.
Then foremat that, and hide it. you can go on and put any number of Primary partitions on same hard drive.

It has a very easy to use boot menu, and using thart you cand boot into each Pri partition , one at a time and install an OS on each, you can have win 98, ME,2000,XP or several copies oof one, 2 or all OSs.
And it is stable. Used it for 3+ years and no real problems.
Home site gives excellent instructions.
When you are in one Pri Partition, all the others are totally hidden, and cannot be accessed.
You can have as many logical or non-pri partitions and these are cisible at all times, and you use these to store data, email store file, and other things you want to be able to access by whatever OD you are currently in.
Works super, and is simple.
And it is FREE.
You can register it and pay $20 to avoid a nag screen that comes up only at bootup time.

hi there,
i was able to hide the first partition but when i went back to fdisk, the primary partition stilled exists. so how do you get from hiding the first partition to starting fdisk and having it see only the difference. trying to do a 80/20 spilt.

I originally configured my lap with 4 primary partitions but not with FDISK.
First I created a single partition big enough for the OS and Applications during XP Setup. Once running XP, I went into disk management and created the other partitions from the remaining free space.
Of course, (as I quickly learned) with a one disk machine, it’s better to have a single primary which can be extended to  include logical drives, which as far as Ghost is concerned is the preferred way.
No matter how many times I tried, all Ghost images were unusable when the “destination was a “Separate” partition.  
Cheers