Question

What Are Hard Drive Partitions?

Answer 1

Sometimes, a hard drive is not used as one drive. Sometimes a hard drive is actually split up into different drives. A specific process is used to accomplish this task, and it is referred to as partitioning. Partitioning is a term that means to break into parts. A hard drive partition is then one part of a drive that has been split into multiple parts. After a hard drive has been partitioned, each hard drive partition is treated as a completely different storage area independent of the other hard drive partitions. Due to this, if a person purchases a 200 GB hard drive, that drive can be split up into multiple partitions that add up to 200 GB. There are a number of different reasons why someone would partition their hard drive. One common reason is to install multiple operating systems. This is due to the fact that one un-partitioned hard drive can only run a single operating system at a time. So if a person wanted to have both Windows and Linux, that person would need to partition the hard drive. If the hard drive is partitioned three times, the third partition may actually be able to be accessed for data by either operating system. To decide which operating system to load, a person can choose the hard drive partition to boot from using a program called a boot loader. Another reason why many people partition their hard drives is to insure against hard drive failure. If the operating system and drivers for a computer are uploaded to a different hard drive partition, a person can have the ability of reinstalling the operating system and drivers if another hard drive partition fails. In this way, the partition can be used as back up like install discs were used in the past. Partitioning is usually accomplished using a command known as fdisk. However, there are also programs that can be downloaded for free or for a price off of the internet. One such program is Partition Magic. Most usually, only four primary partitions can be created. However, there is also the option of creating an infinite number of extended partitions.