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How do I wipe a partition?

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How do I wipe a partition? I don't see that option.

What is the difference between logical and primary partition?

What does it mean if a partition is flagged as active?

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John:

I'm assuming that you're asking about Disk Director 11 (since the wipe function is prominently shown in Disk Director 10):

To wipe a disk, select the disk and choose Clean up disk (I presume that you've already found that function):

To wipe a partition, select the partition and choose Edit. When the disk editor opens, choose Hex view. Click on the first byte at the beginning of the partition and then hit CTRL-SHIFT-END to select all of the bytes in the partition. After the selection has been made, choose Fill from the Edit menu and fill the partition with zeros:

Primary partitions have their location stored in the partition table in sector 0, but since there is only room to have 4 entries in a partition table you can have at most 4 primary partitions on an MBR disk (you can have more on a GPT disk). Primary partitions are generally required for bootable operating systems, although there are exceptions. If you need more that four partitions then you can use logical partitions. One "slot" in the partition table is required for the first logical partition, but after that you can have as many logical partitions as you want. Each logical partition contains information about the location of the next logical partition, so they are "chained" together.

A partition flagged as "Active" is the one that the PC will attempt to boot from when you start up the PC.

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