Windows NT Partitioning Rules During Setup

The information in this article applies to:

• Microsoft Windows NT operating system version 3.1
• Microsoft Windows NT Advanced Server version 3.1
• Microsoft Windows NT Workstation versions 3.5 and 3.51
• Microsoft Windows NT Server versions 3.5 and 3.51
• Microsoft Windows NT Workstation versions 4.0
• Microsoft Windows NT Server versions 4.0

SUMMARY

During the installation of Windows NT, Setup determines the best partitioning scheme to use based on the existing partition table entries and where you choose to install Windows NT. Windows NT setup restraints restrict the boot partition of up to 4GB. The limit may be smaller depending on disk geometry. The actual value which is used as the limit is whatever Setup believes to be 1024 cylinders worth of disk space. Sometimes this is 1GB, 2GB, or 4GB, but can be some other value depending on the make, model, and configuration of the hard disk adapter in use.

For additional information, please see the following article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

  ARTICLE-ID: Q119497
  TITLE     : Boot Partition Created During Setup Limited to 4 Gigabytes

MORE INFORMATION

When you use a Hardware RAID-5 configuration, it is very important to understand how Windows NT partitions your drive during Setup in order to maintain maximum contiguous capacity of the large Array for user data after Windows NT is installed. Setup follows these rules:

Rule 1

If no partitions pre-exist on the drive, Setup makes the primary partition the size you specify for Windows NT (up to 4GB).

Rule 2

If a primary partition already exists, and you choose to install Windows NT in an unformatted free space, Setup creates and uses an extended partition (up to 4GB) to install Windows NT in.

Rule 3

If a primary partition already exists and you choose to create a new partition to install Windows NT in, you are prompted for the size of the partition to create (up to 4GB). After you choose the partition size, Setup creates the largest extended partition possible (up to 4GB) and creates a logical drive within the extended partition of the size you choose. After Windows NT is installed, the unused extended partition space can be used for additional logical drives.

Rule 4

If a primary and extended partition already exist and free space in the extended partition is selected, Windows NT creates a new logical drive of the size specified by you.

Rule 5

If a primary and extended partition already exist and free space is available and selected outside of the extended partition, Windows NT creates another primary partition of the size the you choose (up to 4GB) for Windows NT to be installed in.

There are two possible workarounds:

• Prior to installing Windows NT, use MS-DOS FDISK to create an extended partition of 250 MB, then create a logical drive of 250 MB within the extended partition. When you install Windows NT, select this partition as the target to install Windows NT in.

  -or-

• Install Windows NT into the first primary MS-DOS FAT partition. After Windows NT is installed, run Disk Administrator and create a second primary partition of 250 MB. Re-install Windows NT into this second primary partition and then delete the first Windows NT installation from the first primary MS-DOS partition.

EXAMPLE

You have four 2 GB drives configured in a hardware RAID-5 configuration for a total capacity of 6 GB and want a 5.5 GB NTFS partition for user data after Windows NT is installed. You have MS-DOS pre-installed on a 250MB primary partition prior to installing Windows NT and want to keep this intact. You decide to install Windows NT into a separate NTFS partition and create a 250 MB partition from free space during Windows NT Setup.

Using Rule 3 above, Windows NT creates an EXTENDED partition of 4 GB, then create a 250 MB logical drive within to install Windows NT on. After Windows NT is installed, Disk Administrator shows the following:

   C:   250   MB FAT
   D:   250   MB NTFS (logical drive)
      3.750   GB extended partition space (free)
      1.750   GB Free space
      -----
      6.0     GB total usable space in hardware raid-5 configuration.