Another reason for not limitting Primaries

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sigi
Posts: 243
Joined: Sun Jan 15, 2012 1:59 am

Another reason for not limitting Primaries

Post by sigi »

My two Hard Disks will presumably never contain more than 4 Primaries each: My Win7 on HD-0, an Extended on HD-1, the EMBRM and a few Linux distros. Even so, I would not like the idea of limitting Primaries because I hate to have all of them always present in the MBR as would be the case with Pimaries limitted. The reason is that I would like to perform banking in a reasonably safe Linux environment which does not see any Windows environment at all. As far as I can see there is no means to achieve this with Primaries limitted, is there?
DrTeeth
Posts: 1289
Joined: Fri Aug 12, 2011 6:58 pm

Re: Another reason for not limitting Primaries

Post by DrTeeth »

1) Linux will not write to a windows partition unless you tell it to and windows will not recognise a linux partition either.
2) I use unlimited primaries so my children cannot see my (ahem ;-)) video collection when they use my PC.

DrTeeth
sigi
Posts: 243
Joined: Sun Jan 15, 2012 1:59 am

Re: Another reason for not limitting Primaries

Post by sigi »

DrTeeth wrote:1) Linux will not write to a windows partition unless you tell it to and windows will not recognise a linux partition either. DrTeeth
I thought it was the read attribute that might import Windows malware into the Linux environment?
DrTeeth
Posts: 1289
Joined: Fri Aug 12, 2011 6:58 pm

Re: Another reason for not limitting Primaries

Post by DrTeeth »

Reading itself does not execute a program. Windows malware will not run on Linux anyway. Look at the trouble one has to go through with WINE to get windows software to run on Linux...it cannot happen by accident.
sigi
Posts: 243
Joined: Sun Jan 15, 2012 1:59 am

Re: Another reason for not limitting Primaries

Post by sigi »

So, whereas opening e.g. a pdf file in Windows can activate malicious code, doing so in Linux could not? (Excuse me, I am an absolute newbie at Linux)
DrTeeth
Posts: 1289
Joined: Fri Aug 12, 2011 6:58 pm

Re: Another reason for not limitting Primaries

Post by DrTeeth »

Reading a file is not the same as opening/running a file. Windows software will not run on Linux unless you go out of your way to run it. Linux' security is better than windows.

You really do need to get some basic grounding in Linux...there are many sites that will help you along. To be honest, if I were you, I'd bone up on security too. Have you considered what would happen to your data if your computer got stolen?
pmshah
Posts: 2
Joined: Sun Feb 10, 2013 3:16 am

Re: Another reason for not limitting Primaries

Post by pmshah »

Very simply put only way to hide primary partitions to preclude partition numbering errors in windows is to not limit the primaries. Syarting from Win 95 till Win 8 I have never had a problem with it.
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