I don't know exactly how to dual boot w/partitions

So I have a Dell XPS 1530 with a recently purchased 500GB HD. I wanted to partition it to have a Vista boot up partition a smaller Windows 7 boot up one, and then the rest be in another partition for just music/movies files and stuff.

However, after installing media direct, it took up two partitions! One EIwhatever in the beginning and one in the end. ACcording to windows vista, I can only make four partitions when I need five. I read a lo about logical partitions and such but I can't seem to make one in Windows Vista disk management software. Can anybody help?

 

I might be wrong here but...

According to my "research " you can have as many partitions as you want. What you have to do is either:

• a) Shrink your volume to your desired size
• b) Mount an Empty NTFS folder and assign a letter to it.

Or at least that's my two cents.
Here is a link to a great GUIDE written by the How-To-Geek

There is a link on that page to a dual booting solution also.

"Some Dell notebook computers include a special Dell MediaDirect feature. MediaDirect enables you to watch DVD movies, slideshows, or listen to music without having to boot the complete XP operating system. MediaDirect is installed in a special partition on the hard disk, but is hidden so you cannot see it when XP is booted normally. When the computer is off, pressing the MediaDirect button will boot the MediaDirect partition instead of XP"
more...

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Actually, on a Windows-based system you can have a maximum of 26 partitions - one for each letter of the alphabet. However, you have to be careful with whether your existing partitions are so-called "primary" partitions or "logical" partitions.

You can only have up to 4 primary partitions, or you can have up to 3 primary partitions, and one so-called "extended" partition which you can then chop up into up to 23 additional "logical" partitions.

 

Why do you need 5 partitions?

 

I'm afraid you have to surrender one partition.
You can have 4 primary partitions or 3 primary partition and 1 extended partition (accomodating many logical partititions).
Real OSes can boot from logical partitions. Sissy OSes only boot from primary partitions.
I guess now you have
1. DELL boot utilities primary (hidden)
2. Windows1 primary
3. Windows2 primary
4. Media Direct primary

and hence no room for a data partition.
I'd ditch MD and do
1. DELL boot utilities primary
2. Windows1 primary
3. Windows2 primary
4. extended partition
-4.1 OSes data (temp files, internet download, configuration files)
-4.2 documents (this is the partition you'll end up backing up every day)
-4.3 big data (music, videos, pictures)

 

I think you're confusing drive letter and partitions.
4 seems to be the number of primary partitions you can have and looks like Sredni's plan should work.