Storage devices

Types of HDD

Types of Mobile HDD

Partition Series

FAT

NTFS

Raid

Linux

Other Parts

Operating Systems

Windows

Other operating systems

Other

Hard Disk Partitions

  • Partitioning hard disk is done by special applications. In MS-DOS and Windows a widely known FDISK program is used for this purpose. It allows creating partitions, setting their size and labels. FDISK allows allocating either all hard disk space or part of it for MS-DOS or Windows, and leave some part of it for other operating systems.

    FDISK can perform the following functions:
    • create a primary DOS partition containing one logical disk
    • create an Extended Partition that can be broken into any number of logical partitions (disks)
    • mark a partition as active (only one primary partition can be active)

    Additional partitions can be created in the unallocated disk space with tools from other operating systems (OS/2, Linux).

    Note
    • Information about partitions on a hard disk is stored in a special disk area - in the 1st sector of the 0th cylinder, header 0, which is called a Partition Table. This sector is called the Master Boot Sector or Master Boot Record, MBR.
    • A physical hard disk can contain up to 4 primary partitions. This limitation is due only to the capacity of the Partition Table, which itself consists of only four partitions. However, it does not that you can install only 4 different operating systems! Actually modern software - the so-called disk managers - allows installing many more operating systems. For example, OS Selector disk manager, which was also developed by Acronis, allows installing up to 100 operating systems on one hard disk!

    Partitioning hard disks is a feature that is available in all operating systems.
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