Verbatim 931gb external drive

[julio99]

I have a 931 GB verbatim external drive that I use for backups with Acronis TI Home 2013. My thoughts are partitioning this external drive into 2 partitions so I can back up both of my machines. I used the mini tool partition wizard once before and I got to just about finished when I realized that the original section of the hard drive was reading Primary and the other section or partition if you will was reading Logical. I stopped at that point to write you all and ask if both partitions on the external should be Primaries or Logicals or does it matter. As I said I use Acronis for my disk image backups. Also isn't there a limit on how many Primary partitons you are allowed to have? I don't know if that came out right, so I hope you know what I'm trying to say. I guess there should be 2 separate letters for the partitions for ID purposes.
I hope I have been clear enough for what I want to do. It's just a matter of repartitioning an external drive and if they should be Primary or Logical? I sure hope someone can help me. I am using windows 7 x64 with lots of RAM and a Core i5-430M processor.

 

[TrainableMan]

The limit is 4 partitions if you have an OS on it; even though you won't have an OS on it there is not much value in chopping a 1TB drive smaller than 4 pieces. Normally your first partition would be Primary, the rest is an Extended partition and within the extended you would put 1 to 3 logical drives. Each Primary and Logical drive would get its' own drive letter.

It's fine if you want multiple partitions but just FYI, you can have more than one backup within a single partition, just give the files different names.

 

[julio99]

The limit is 4 partitions if you have an OS on it; even though you won't have an OS on it there is not much value in chopping a 1TB drive smaller than 4 pieces. Normally your first partition would be Primary, the rest is an Extended partition and within the extended you would put 1 to 3 logical drives. Each Primary and Logical drive would get its' own drive letter.

It's fine if you want multiple partitions but just FYI, you can have more than one backup within a single partition, just give the files different names.

Really? I have a different version of Acronis on the other laptop. I actually think this is going to work. I just plugged it in and started it under "Randys Partitions" instead of "My Backups"I will let you know how it worked although I won't be doing a "Recovery" so I won't know for %100 sure, although if nothing gets overwritten I think things will be fine. I was only going to create 2 seperate partitions on the external. I was going to shrink it and then create the new partition off of the un-allocated space. Very simple to do. It was just making sure that both partitions were the same "Primary". I didn't think a Logical would work next to a Primary on the external. You know what I mean?
Well it worked very nicely and I don't see a reason why it wouldn't recover either. Thank you so much for the knowledge. I didn't have to chop up my external. I guess it always better to ask first isn't it? You have saved my rear end a few times now. You are like a go-to guy for computer knowledge.

 

[TrainableMan]

Yes logical drives would have worked alongside the primary, but with two different names for the different backups you should be perfectly fine using a single partition.

Glad I was able to help.