Active Partitions

Microsoft support and most "help" sites I visit tell me the primary partition containing the OS should be made "active" to allow BIOS to identify the boot partition.

This confuses me somewhat as my disk "c" has only one partition and "Disk Management" shows it as being a "Basic" NTFS partition. It confirms it as being "Primary" but not "Active".

Does this mean that it is not after all, necessary to make a boot partition "Active" in XP?



Also, if I may I would like to ask another question and that is:-

I have bought a used but formatted OEM disk of the same volume and single partition as my disk "c" and I intend to use it to "Clone" the whole of disk "c" and keep it as a bootable disk as a backup. However, I get the impression from various sources there is a problem with using an OEM disk for this purpose. Is this correct?

 

as you can see in the picture mine says basic and it is my active partition, because right clicking will have mark as active grayed out.

http://www.howtogeek.com/201254/what-is-a-bare-or-oem-hard-drive/

read above, it appears that it is fine, I am getting ready to try the same thing with a hard drive I removed from an hp pc, just have to find an external enclosure for it.

 

Many thanks once again Elizabeth 23.

My disk (c) does have the "Mark Partition as Active" greyed out, so I assume it is already an "Active" one. What I cannot understand however, is that I have never made it an Active one. I simply bought the disk new retail, installed my OS via the XP disc and it has worked just fine ever since, so does that mean it is not really necessary to make one's basic OS disk an Active one after all?

If your reply is yes, I should or must make my OEM disk Active before I can use it as a backup, is it as simple as left clicking "Mark Partition as Active"to make it so, assuming it is not greyed out?

Thanks also for the website link which explained everything nice and simple!

Sorry for being a pain but I never knew "Active" partitions existed until now!!

 

no, you might have to make it active if it was not being recognized, that is one of the troubleshooting steps.

depends on how it reads in disk management once you have it attached, might already be active if not mark it so.

http://www.online-tech-tips.com/computer-tips/set-active-partition-vista-xp/

https://www.microsoft.com/resources...ddocs/en-us/dm_active_partition.mspx?mfr=true

more info on above sites, you should be good to go just attaching drive.