Thanks Tom!
To clarify:
1- Questions 1.1 and 1.2 were talking about the same thing, so I'm assuming you thought 1.1 was about internal drives even though I was referring to external ones in both questions, and that's why you said "yes" to 1.1 and "no" to 1.2. I know I can partition internal HDs with one partition for OS and one (or more) for program files/other media data, so thanks for letting me know that I can't use that setup on an external one, since windows wont boot on an external drive. That's what I was going for
nice link.
2- I know HDs always have less space available in the computer than they advertise, and even less after formatting, so a 1TB will have roughly 954 GB free after format (curtsey Google search). I wasn't sure if they meant "disc" as in a "Hard Drive Disc Drive" type thing that is recognized by your computer (I think it was being sold from China, and they usually have weird English in their product description on eBay, so that's where I'm getting that from), or if they meant each of the individual 3 platters inside the drive, as if I would need to know that for some reason even though it wouldn't effect partition space. Hopefully that sentence made sense.
I ask because I've heard that certain BIOSes will only recognize single HD partitions up to a certain size (a similar concept to how 32 bit systems only recognize up to about 4GB of RAM, no matter how much RAM you actually install). So I wasn't sure if that phrase was somehow related that BIOS limitation I've heard of, and would therefore force me to make 3 partitions of that size to use it all. Speaking of which, is that BIOS limitation true? How do I know what size of HD my BIOS will recognize as a single partition before forcing me to divide it up into multiple smaller ones?
3- Got it
Sorry for my rambling approach to explain myself, I just find it more efficient to ask multiple questions at once to speed up time it takes to get them all answered
and I'm not great at organizing them all efficiently. So thanks for bearing with me!
