windows recognizes only the first primary partition

[ChrisGreaves]

I'm feeling particularly dense and seek some layman's-terms understanding.

I thought I understood hard drives - 4 IDE drives on a chassis, and a master and secondary partitions on each drive, although I didn't do that much with all those choices.

I have been able to carve my Notebook hard drive into a system partition - drive C - with Windows & programs, and a data partition - drive D - with data files.

I am successful in creating rescue disks on 1 Gigabyte memory keys, one key each for the Netbook and the Notebook; they reboot and bring up Macrium Reflect, so I'm in business.

But I don't understand all the hoo-hah about Primary and Logical partitions.
a Google Search for windows recognizes only the first primary partition on a removable device brings up a lot of stuff, which (maybe it's too late on the weekend) is leaving me dazed.

Question 1: What is the reasoning behind NOT allowing a memory key to be partitioned? I think a USB external drive can be partitioned; why not a USB memory key?

Question 2: Is it unreasonable for me to expect to have a rescue key with a 200MB partition holding the boot stuff, and a second 800MB partition to hold those Really Useful Utilities (Macrium, TrueCrypt, Win Resource kit, EaseUs etc)?

Question 3: Am I inviting trouble if I just leave the 1 GB partition (image below) as is but make a folder "InstallationTools" and drop utilities in there?

I have set aside two 1GB keys, bootable, one for each system, and these keys are being stored in the fireproof box where live my external backup drives.
I have two other USB keys I can use for data and they can be roped in to hold copies of installation utilities if needed.

These are not critical questions for me; I'm curious, and can't think of why this restriction would be in place.

Here is an image of the 1GB key Macrium Reflect rescue disk for the Notebook.

1.png

[DaveA]

Do a google on 'USB memory key partition' and you will find many descriptions about doing this, and a lot of "Tools" to do this.