Can't add drive letter to partition, have 7 primary partitions

Ok i know this sounds stupid but how do I end up with 7 primary partitions? I thought you could only have 4. Anyway, one of my partitions no longer has a drive letter so I can't access anything on it. I'm unable to right click it in disk Management to add one, the option is grayed out (see pic).

1st partition = 100MB Windows 7 boot
2nd partition = the windows OS on it's own 50G partition
3rd partition = 50G FreeBSD Unix (this is a multi-boot system)
4th partition = 500G data partition, the one that lost it's drive letter D:.
5th, 6th, and 7th partitions are Linux partitions and the last one looks like an extended partition by the green outline.

I've used this system successfully since last year when Windows 7 came out. It's worked pretty good but all of a sudden it lost the drive letter for the 500G data partition. I have no idea what happened or how to get it back. Any ideas? Attached Thumbnails

The 500gig isn't being recognized as an NTFS partition. The Linux partitions will be seen as primary but windows doesn't care about them and won't allow you to assign a drive letter because they aren't NTFS or FAT. If you had data on the 500 you better get it off to an external or something and be prepared to recreate and format. See if you can access it from the other OS or a Linux LiveCD.

4 primary's on NTFS is the rule.

If you need several Linux partitions, the best thing to do would be to buy a second drive (if you already don't have one) and install it inside of a drive case (can be found for $20-25). If you have an eSATA port, make sure to get a enclosure that has one, too. If not, a USB connection will do. Preferably a 7200 rpm drive, it will run faster. Linux will run from USB, Windows will not. I have a drive that runs Linux Mint fine by a USB connection.

And BTW, svrich, welcome to the forum! Should you require further assistance, post back anytime.

Cat

That's true, IF you have selected the drive to be an MBR drive.

If you have room in your tower case then put the extra hard drive in it rather than an external case.

Thanks,

After booting with the Fedora13 live CD and using it's fdisk I saw the partition type somehow got changed from 07 (NTFS) to a5 (FreeBSD). I changed it back to 07 with fdisk and after booting back to W7 it had the D: letter back but windows saw it as a raw partition and wants to format it. I was unable to save the data but I had it backed up. Sometimes multiple OSes don't play nice together on the same disk. I'm going to toss the Linux and put it on another PC or USB drive. Less hassles. I do have a second drive for backup, any more drives and it makes too much heat.

thanks for the help guys

If you have adequate ventilation, that shouldn't make that much difference. You can always add another fan or replace a fan with a higher output fan.