Hard drive partitionsHard-drive partitions
Hard drive partitions are the way the hard drive breaks up large areas allowing them to be separate. This is how many people dual boot Windows and Linux. (Have an option at start-up to run one or the other) There are many advantages to partitioning your hard drive(s) using hard drive partitions, it simply allows you to divide up your information. I will give examples on a Windows system. First of all how do I partition my hard drive? There is the utility known as f disk on your Windows boot disk. If you don’t have one don’t worry they are available to download from lots of places across the net, or you could use an application called Partition Magic, which is by far the easiest to use with extensive help. When you make changes you are less likely to lose information using this software. The main facts to be aware of are that there are different kinds of hard drive partitions, which consist of primary and logical. Your primary partition normally will hold your operating system and the logical partition will hold information or possibly another operating system. Your system will boot from the primary partition. I recommend doing a scan disk and running a defragmenter on your hard drive. This will limit data loss, although there have been times when I have partitioned my hard drives and I have had no adverse effects. Start / my computer / hard disk you wish to partition / right click / properties / tools tab / select weather to scan disk or defrag. Doing a regular scan disk and defrag will help keep your computer in shape and running efficiently. You should also be aware of when you select a file system for your hard drive, it must be compatible with your Operating system. This is important so that data can be read from the partition. File systems are in simple form just how the data is written to the hard drive. Windows can read FAT 16, FAT 32 and NTFS file system. Windows NT, 2k and XP, are designed for the NTFS file system.
Why do you want to partition your hard drive(s)? We have already mentioned dual booting with another operating System such as Linux. There are lots of guides to this on the Internet. Dual booting has got particularly easy since some distributions can manipulate NTFS, a Windows file system. There are advantages past this though, say for back up purposes you can write more sensitive data to it restricting access rights or even encrypting the information. This can also to extent protect the information from viruses, although you should back up necessary data to a CD/DVD or floppies. Even with the event of something going wrong with Windows you can often format (wipe clean) the partition Windows is on, re install and still have some of your necessary data on your separate partition. As you can imagine this can be very worthwhile. You can even hide hard drive partitions but this can get awkward. Do not hide your primary partition or you system will not boot into Windows. Separate hard drive partitions will come in my computer (start / my computer) as separate drives, which shows where your specific information resides. When you have moved it to a partition, you can look though it. Note: I am not responsible for any damage you cause to your system. I would recommend only using this guide if you are prepared to lose data, as with computing things can and do indeed go wrong. Posted by – Richard – United Kingdom
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