AOMEI Partition Assistant can help you to convert a logical partition to primary or set primary partition in Windows without any efforts.
Apart from the core features, AOMEI Partition Assistant also provides function to convert Logical partition to primary partition. Primary partition offers necessary elements for an operating system. The primary partition that has operating system installed mostly is an active partition. One MBR disk may contain a maximum of 4 primary partitions, or 3 primary partitions with one extended partition. Therefore, one MBR could be installed with 4 different systems in total. Many users partition hard drive with two primary partitions to dual boot Windows 10 and Windows 7.
Due to the limitation of MBR disk, a possible partition layout is one or two primary partitions with several logical partitions. Logical partition can be created in extended partition without amount limit. These logical partitions are used to store user's data in most cases. When you need to prepare a partition for system or boot, you need to convert first. The conversion from logical to primary is mainly applied on basic MBR disks because all partitions on GPT disk style are primary partition. You can find logical partition and extended partition on MBR disk. To learn more on partition table, please refer to disk partition basic understanding.
This tool is very useful for you to convert a partition between primary and logical. If you would like to use this feature, please upgrade to a paid version of AOMEI Partition Assistant Professional, Server, or above versions.
1. Install and run AOMEI Partition Asssistant Professional. Right-click the logical partition you want to convert and choose "Advanced" and then select "Convert to Primary Partition".
2. Click "OK" to confirm the operation in the following pop-up window.
3. You can preview the conversion operation by viewing the "Pending Operations". To commit the "Pending Operations", please click "Apply" and "Proceed".
4. Wait for the operation to finish and then the primary partition will be converted to logical successfully.
Following the above steps, you can easily and quickly convert logical partition to primary without data loss. It is necessary to change logical partition to primary partition in the below situations:
1. Operating System Compatibility: Some older operating systems, particularly certain versions of Windows (e.g., Windows XP), can only be installed on primary partitions. If you need to install such an operating system, you must convert one of your logical partitions to a primary partition to accommodate it.
2. Booting Limitations: In certain cases, the computer's BIOS or firmware may have limitations on booting from logical partitions. If you want to make a logical partition bootable, you'll need to convert it to a primary partition so that the system can recognize it as a bootable partition.
3. Partitioning Scheme Limitations: Master Boot Record (MBR), an older partitioning scheme, has a limitation of supporting only four primary partitions. If you have already reached this limit and want to create additional partitions, you can convert one of the existing logical partitions to a primary partition to overcome the limitation.
Convert logical partition to primary could be very easy actually. Apart from converting logical drive to primary partition, AOMEI Partition Assistant also allows you to convert MBR to GPT disk without losing data. As covered before, GPT disk style does not have primary partition amount limitation. So it is a good choice to install multiple OS. Download to discover more.
Notes:
This process also applies to how to convert extended partition to primary.
If there are other applications running on the partition which you are going to perform, AOMEI Partition Assistant will notice you to close those applications or to execute this operation in PreOS Mode.
If you don’t want that much primary partition, it is available to convert primary partition to logical again.
FAQs:
Q: Why the option "convert to primary partition" is grayed out?
A: The disk should be a MBR disk, whose partition style only supports 4 primary partitions or 3 primary partitions + 1 extended partition (which contains many logical partitions). If there are already 3 primary partitions + some logical partitions on the disk, then it is unable to convert a logical partition to primary. You can convert one primary partition to logical or convert the MBR disk to GPT.
Q: Will the operation cause data loss after a logical partition is converted to primary partition?
A: Normally, it will not cause data loss after conversion. However, for data security, it is still recommended to make a backup of important data in advance.