Partitioning

Partitioning is the process of dividing the hard disk’s space into sections, so they can be dedicated to different aims. You can partition your HD, and each partition will behave like a separate disk drive. Having a partitioned hard disk is indispensable, rather than just convenient.

There are various types of partitions; we are mostly interested in those logical, since it’s often their alignment, size and contents that determine the efficiency of your PC work.

To tell the truth, the most widespread partitioning scheme would look like this:

  • C: - operating system (+ some docs or program files);
  • D: - other, including data, applications and so on.

This appears a bit senseless in the way it is insecure in the first place. There are a number of more reasonable partitioning schemes designed for particular needs of the user. So before splitting up your HD into partitions, try to figure out the end goal of partitioning for you. You might find these points important:

  • organize your work and structure your files;
  • secure protection against data loss;
  • boost your PC performance and expand its capabilities (for example running multiple OSes).

For a home user, it would be suitable to partition their HD as follows:

  • C: - operating system only;
  • D: - program files;
  • E: - docs, music, video;
  • F: - backup.

Combining the two mentioned lists (the targets of partitioning and your HD’s possible structure), we can make several useful conclusions.

To hit the first target (organize your work and structure your files), you can split your E: drive into logical sections, containing your workfiles, pictures and multimedia respectively. It’ll facilitate and accelerate the search for needed files and help you keep things in order.

The second target implies you’ll have to enlarge your F: partition. Backup is of vital importance for any user, but unfortunately, we often forget (or are a little bit too lazy) to make an extra copy of our docs, music and pictures, which can easily get lost after a system failure. It always occurs when you least expect it and wipes out all your critical workfiles and dear memories. There are a lot of pieces of backup and recovery software in the market now; and it’s desirable that you use one to preserve your data.

The third target is connected with multi-boot in most cases, or other operations valuable for experienced PC users mainly. Multi-booting is the act of installing multiple operating systems on a computer, and the ability to choose which one to boot when switching on the computer power.

The feature has many advantages:

  • Several pieces of software require different operating systems and cannot be run on a single system. A dual boot configuration will allow the user to apply all this software on one computer.
  • The user can test a new operating system without switching to it completely. Multi-booting allows one to get to know the new system, configure all applications needed and migrate data before making the final step and removing the old operating system.
  • Multi-booting can also aid software developers where multiple operating systems are required for development or testing purposes. Having these systems on one machine can greatly reduce hardware costs.

Nevertheless, you need to have great expertise to take advantage of multi-boot, since compatibility issues may arise with different operating systems: one operating system may not be able to recognize another operating system’s file system and thus try to format it to its native file system, erasing the existing data.

Hard disk repartitioning is one of the common tasks that people are facing when installing a second OS on their PC. Each OS uses its own file systems (e.g. Windows XP primarily uses NTFS and can use FAT32). Linux should be installed on its own file system Ext3 or Reisner. In this case you need at least two additional partitions. If your NTFS system encompasses the whole hard drive, repartitioning is the best option.

The second important use of repartitioning is to create a partition to backup a bootable partition. You should always defragment the all existing partitions on the disk before repartitioning. That’s the law. Otherwise your chances to lose data increase dramatically.

By the way, it should be noted that partitioning your home PC and a server are quite different things. The latter is dedicated to special tasks; the following description explains which ones: server partitioning.