PC Hardware A Beginner’s Guide

(^192) PC Hardware: A Beginner’s Guide
low-level format erases the disk at the media level (physical erase), in most cases should
the disk need to be cleaned off, a high-level format (logical erase) is usually enough. The
high-level format erases the FAT, which erases all references to the files stored on the
disk, which in effect, erases the disk.

Partitioning the Hard Disk

As described in the previous section, a disk must be physically formatted (low-level

format), partitioned, and logically formatted (high-level format) before it can store data.

The partitioning phase creates physical divisions of the disk that can be used to segment

thediskandallowfortwoormoreoperatingsystemsorthecreationofmultiplefilesystems.

Partitioning the hard disk allows you to:

 Divide the disk into logical “subdrives” that can be addressed separately

with a drive letter assigned to each, such as C:, D:, and E:

 Create separate areas on the disk for multiple operating systems, such as

storing Windows and Linux on the same hard disk, each in its own partition

 Separate program files from data files on separate disk partitions to facilitate

faster and easier data backups

Partitioning a hard disk can improve the disk’s efficiency. For example, Windows assigns

disk clusters (logical collections of sectors) that are sized in proportion to partition size.

Bigger clusters may sound like a good thing, but just the opposite is true. Large disk

drives or bigger partitions result in bigger clusters, which unfortunately result in small

unused spaces on the disk. By reducing the size of the disk or more smaller partitions, the

result is reduced cluster sizes.

If you wish to have only one partition on your disk, that’s perfectly all right. However,

you should know that on some systems, if you wish to use the entire disk, you will have

to create smaller partitions. For example, on DOS, Windows 3.x, or an early release of

Windows 95, partition sizes must be smaller than 2GB, which means that a disk larger

than 2GB must be divided into two or more partitions if you wish to use the entire disk.

Windows 98 and Windows 2000 allow you to create partitions of up to 4TB (terabytes).

A hard disk can be divided into two types of partitions:

 Primary partitions The primary partition contains the operating system and

is usually the one from which the PC is booted. A hard disk can be divided into

a maximum of four primary partitions, but on most operating systems, only

one primary partition may be active at a time.

 Extended partitions This type of partition can be divided into as many as

23 logical partitions, each of which can be assigned its own drive identity.

Extended partitions can be used for any purpose.