What is an HDD partition, and what does it do?

[FireSBurnsmuP]

I hear you all here talk about a lot of "partitions" when talking about hard drives, backing up data, and reinstalling windows. What is that, exactly, and what does it do?

[FC Jamison]

Let's see if I can explain this right...

A partition is simply a way of dividing the space on your hard drive to be used for different purposes.

For instance, my hard drive is 160GB and I have formatted 2 partitions.

The partitions are read as different drives (C and D)
On the C partition, I keep my operating system and the programs I have loaded...on the D partition, I keep all of my backup files.

If I have to reload my operating system (which I do from time to time) I can erase the C partition while leaving the D partition intact.

That way, I don't lose all of my data.

Dividing your hard drive into separate partitions is also commonly used to load two different operating systems on the same computer.

[tgreer]

A "partition" is a logical division of a physical device. You can divide your single drive into multiple "parts" that the OS can use.

[FC Jamison]

Isn't that what I said?

lol

[tgreer]

Yep. Your answer was great. I just wanted to stress the difference between a logical device and a physical device.

Another detail: until recently, most OS's weren't built to handle extremely large hard drives, so partioning your drive into lots of logical drives was the only way to use all your hard drive capacity.

[FC Jamison]

I remember that...I forget what the limit was, though.

Didn't that have something to do with the limitations of FAT32?

[Mix]

Fat32 sucked. The error didn't really get resolved until late Win2k. http://klineitsolutions.com/support/viewtopic.php?t=29 I got this info off a new up and coming forum I joined. You had to manually go in the registry yourself and literally tell Windows to support data over 197 gb.

[FireSBurnsmuP]

Alright... Well, that should help, thanks a lot.

[Mix]

Np

[kishindo]

i dont have a lot of space in my h drive (which contains all my windows files) but my c drive has like 40gb free can i partition some of the c drive to act an h drive?

[SaintThomas]

HDD partition is about make a part of one big hard disk for easy use.
Like if you have 160GB HDD drive than your make 4 partition of 40GB. or any size you require. But you must have C: drive size at least 10 GB for OS installation.

From any os you make partition while installation.

Or you make partition with "Norton Partition Magic 8.05".

Or if you have installed OS mostly Microsoft than
goto my computer properties > manage > disk management and make different partition or change drive latter, format, etc utilities available.