active partition: The active participation is the partition that is bootable, in other words, the one that will boot if the system is booted up.

Must it always be a primary partition?? Is this the root of the myth about Windows needing to be on the first primary partition?? (I boot Windows (95 or 98) from other primary partitions by using a boot loader -- never tried it from a logical partition). I (we) know Linux can be booted from a logical partition. Is the only reason we can't boot Windows from a logical partition due to something like the 2 GB limit??)

There is only one active partition on a hard drive at any point in time. (The active partition can be changed -- one way is by using the (dos/Windows) fdisk command for partitions that dos/Windows can handle. Most partition managers (like Partition Commander) have a means to set the active partition, but they may have menu choices with legends like "make this partition bootable?".)

See:

• http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;q101787 -- may be somewhat out-of-date, and written for dos/Windows, but still interesting.

Contributors

• RandyKramer - 02 Feb 2002
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