Talk:Disk partitioning
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Merger

Hi, I returned the materials moved to Hard disk drive partitioning history, because they don't make up for a whole article. Let me explain: each article in Wikipedia has to reach a balance of size versus integration of details. Now the history of hard drive partitioning is quite integral to the concept of drive partitioning, and it doesn't excessively increase the size. So in this case it's best to leave it in one chunk. Remember, Wikipedia is an encyclopedia with proper articles, not Everything2 with nodes :-) --Uriyan

In fact, the history of partitioning is just about the only thing on the topic. The whole concept of partitioning is completely obsolete. Partitioning (and formatting) make no sense in the case of a Logging FS where you can grow and shrink the log dynamically. -- Ark

POV, surely -- partitioning is still critically relevant to the vast majority of filesystems. Wikipedia doesn't enjoy the luxury of closing its eyes and pretending that it doesn't exist. --Jkew 19:46, 22 November 2005 (UTC)

To do: Drive partitioning on non- IBM PC architectures was moved from the article to here. --cprompt 02:23, 21 Dec 2003 (UTC)

I merged the following articles Active partition, Partition (Computing), Partition (IBM PC) - Jacob 16 Jun 2005

Extended partitions?

Extended partition is linked here, but the article doesn't define - or even mention! - extended partitions, let alone explain how they function. Is this missing for a reason, or does it just await writing? --Dyfrgi 22:42, 7 May 2006 (UTC)

I added a blurb about this when I rewrote the article a bit. Fiskars007 21:19, 10 August 2006 (UTC)

• You can, however, find more details about extended partitions in the article extended_boot_record (EBR). Daniel B. Sedory 05:52, 4 August 2007 (UTC)

1024 sector limitation

The article says:

"Technical limitations of a filesystem or operating system (e.g. old versions of the Microsoft FAT filesystem or old Linux kernels that can't boot on a partition with more than 1024 sectors)"

Is this a reference to the old limitation in LILO that meant it could not boot from a partition that began after the 1024th cylinder on a drive? If so, the statement above needs to be corrected. — Yama 10:00, 15 September 2005 (UTC)

XOSL link

I have removed the dead link to xosl.org (which now belongs to a link farm):

• operating system loader

Although Ranish has a mirror of it, I'm not really sure how relevant an operating system loader is to an article on partitioning -- all the other links are to either further information on partitioning or to partitioning utilities, not to loaders. --Jkew 19:30, 22 November 2005 (UTC)

Extended/logical partitions

24 logical partitions in an extended partition? Since when? Assume this is a typo for 4. Should also note that extended partitions can be nested. --Jkew 19:40, 22 November 2005 (UTC)

I think this refers to the limit existing since DOS 3.3 (1987) to have a maximum of 23 logical partitions inside an extended partition (using a chained setup where each partition is preceded by an "EBR" with only two entries, one being the logical, and the other being another extended which points to the next slice.)
The limit of 23 was computed as being 26 (letters) -2 (A: and B: were for floppies) -1 (for C: which had to be primary). --AntoineL 15:16Z, December 5th, 2005

• As AntoineL pointed out, there can be 26 drive letters under DOS/Windows on a PC, so the only typo error was in showing 24 instead of 23, but another OS may be able to create an unlimited number of extended partitions! Linux, e.g., doesn't use drive letters as an IBM/Microsoft OS does.

• Your comment, "Should also note that extended partitions can be nested." is incorrect, at least according to every OS and utility that I've tested. None of them ever created a nested extended partition! See the discussion page for extended boot record. If you know of a utility/OS that truly creates nested partitions, please list all the details there. Daniel B. Sedory 18:07, 4 August 2007 (UTC)

Hardlink attacks

Would be useful to provide a link to this for those (like me) who had their interest piqued -- can't find anything suitable within Wikipedia. --Jkew 19:49, 22 November 2005 (UTC)

Google. ;^ ] 68.64.175.222 22:45, 26 January 2006 (UTC)

Other partitioning implementations

Concurrent schemes used

There are a number of them; GNU Parted or Linux fdisk support a few like the Unix-inherited (BSD, Sun, etc.) disklabels or the Apple Macintosh scheme; there is also the SCO Xenix divvy scheme which may be historically relevant.--AntoineL 15:51Z, December 5th, 2005

Intel GUID Partition Table

A recent edit (Nov 30th) added

Its however unlikely this project will ever replace IBM PC partitions as the Itanium processor was not received well by the market.

While factually correct about Itanic, I do not agree with the conclusion. For the PC architecture, GPT is still the only scheme with some acceptance which saves the 2TB barrier (32-bit count of 512-byte sectors). It is implemented in Linux, BSD, and the recent versions of Windows.
I am not to say GPT will be the solution (would be a POV.) Booting is certainly still a problem to solve, and the BIOS makers are expected here; also AMD does not seem willingful to acceptance the EFI standard as a whole (but GPT can easilly be severed.)--AntoineL 15:51Z, December 5th, 2005

Too technical

In reading this article, I have come across quite a few terms that would definitely not be readily identifiable to many people who use PCs. Jargon terms are used rather than simple English- defining/wikifying the terms would be a good idea. On the whole, the article is well written from a basic techie viewpoint, but that moves it away from being generally useful to a broad base of Wikipedia readers.

→ P.MacUidhir (t) (c) 05:34, 26 February 2006 (UTC)

I agree with you - i actually did try a bit at fixing that up a bit. I find it less confusing now, but it's also noticeably shorter (mostly because the List of partition utilities was given it's own article). Fiskars007 21:19, 10 August 2006 (UTC)

I was about to try and fix a bit as well, but the oversimplistic Linux-centric view is very unhelpful, and AFAICT, inaccurate, especially all the stuff about how things are partitioned, it would be nice to see Slice vs Partition explanations and where it starts talking about LVM's perhaps a good example as provided by HP (not the Linux copies) would be more helpful than just this stuff about how Linux does it this way or that way. Most people don't use Linux. -- Steve Roome --82.46.105.47 23:53, 1 May 2007 (UTC)

We already have a slice (disk) article, and BSD disklabel; would a merge make sense? Note that partitions are used by DOS and NT-based systems as well as Linux. –EdC 22:05, 2 May 2007 (UTC)

windows partition setup??

talking about windows partitions... should the programs and files (eg my docs) be stored together on a 2nd partition, or both separately on a 2nd and 3rd?? - mar 1st —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 137.205.148.10 (talk • contribs) 18:20, 1 March 2006 (UTC)

You should put this sort of question on a computer tech support forum or similar where it may be better answered - this is an encyclopedia, not an IT help desk. If you'd like my recommendation, you would be able to get by with just one or two partitions - adding more partitions makes your life harder, and you run the risk of running out of space for example documents while you still have room for programs (like what often happens to users on Unix-like operating systems). Fiskars007 21:19, 10 August 2006 (UTC)

One technical detail

The drive mentions making the C drive "nonexistent" and putting the OS on another drive. Could this somehow be clarified? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 129.7.154.58 (talk • contribs) 00:04, 24 March 2006 (UTC)

No idea how that works. My computer actually boots Windows XP from H:, not C:, but I still have a C: drive. I think that it's a requirement in Windows still that you must have a C: partition, a holdover from MS-DOS... but I really have no clue. Research should be done on this, or it should be removed. 72.78.224.21 20:48, 10 August 2006 (UTC)

Often, to create extra space, a hard disk is compressed. When this happens, the compressed data is basically stored as one huge file on the hard disk. It is then opened and treated as a separate disk. To avoid confusion, the drive letters are often swapped, so that the compressed data is C: and the original hard disk (containing the compressed file and usually all or part of the system) is given another letter.130.101.100.106 16:06, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

Needs more info.

On Primary, Logical and Extended Partitions. BKmetic 14:29, 17 May 2006 (UTC)

I added a mention of them - they should be expanded. I will mark it as a stub. Fiskars007 21:19, 10 August 2006 (UTC)

UNIX partitions??

According to the article /boot is its own partition. That makes no sense, /boot includes files that is needed to define how to mount the partitions defined in /etc. For these reasons, /boot, /etc, /proc and /bin cannot be their own partitions or the system won't boot. Better be correct. And also, note that very few distributions actually make that making partitions by default. --Svippong - Talk 20:49, 23 November 2006 (UTC)

What you said here is incorrect: I've been booting up my Linux systems for years with a SEPARATE /boot PARTITION. My /boot partition, as do all of them, contains a copy of the Linux kernel, which knows full well how to access whatever data it needs before booting up the whole system completely. You are correct that many recent distributions default to just dumping everything in a single '/' partition, but even under some Live CDs, with some planning, it's possible to install them to more than one partition. Daniel B. Sedory 10:28, 12 April 2007 (UTC)

Partitioning = Dissection? Not always...

"In layman's terms, partitioning a hard drive makes it appear to be more than one hard drive, especially in how each partition is formatted for different operating systems, and in how files are copied from one partition to another."

Not true. Partitioning is not JUST subdividing a physical hard drive into multiple logical partitions, even creating one partition on one hard drive is still partitioning, just not as advanced. Also, partitioning several disks (such as disks in a RAID format) still do not involve taking one hard drive and dissecting it.

Basically, since I can't think of how to reword it, someone else think of it. (This is in the intro)

--DEMONIIIK 01:13, 9 April 2007 (UTC)

How about one of these:

Partitioning a hard disk reserves some specific area within it so that an operating system may use that space as a whole logical drive or as part of a larger file system. A single hard disk may thus contain one or more logical drives or even just part of a logical drive that could span several hard disks.

or

Partitioning a hard disk defines specific areas (partitions) within the disk so that they may be used by one or more Operating Systems. Any one partition may form part of a larger file system or it may be an entire logical drive.

or

Partitioning a hard disk drive defines specific areas (the partitions) within the disk. A partition may constitute an entire logical drive or it may form part of a larger logical drive which could span over several partitions and hard disks.

Intersofia 15:31, 22 May 2007 (UTC)

Active partitions and list of file systems

Could anyone give an explanation —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 193.112.172.12 (talk • contribs) 15:16, 28 February 2007 (UTC)

Partitions are not limited to hard disks

Correct me if I am wrong, which is why I haven't waded in to correct the article. A partition is a way of dividing up space in a volume. A Volume can be anything from a file on a filesystem already present to a real hard disks volume, in some situations a volume can span a number of hard disks or other storage media. So as I see it the hierarchy is a follows:

Physical Storage media
>Volume
>>Partition Table (or system specific equivalent)
>>Partition(s)
>>>>Filesystem
>>>>>>File

So the common usage of partitioning the hard disk is not strictly true.

And the term Volume comes directly from the literal meaning for space.

Interestingly on some systems, (GNU/Linux) included, one can write a filesystem directly to a block device and skip the partitioning altogether, a filesystem directly on a volume. In this case one does not, for example, mount "/dev/hda1" but the equivalent would be "/dev/hda".

With all of the references to hard-disks in this article it is a big edit and one that I would appreciate some feedback on beforehand.

Thanks. 81.138.5.131 (talk) 14:29, 11 February 2008 (UTC)

User 81.138.5.131, actually, it depends upon the system used to do the partitioning! Under any DOS OS or even many UNIX/Linux 'fdisk' programs, or anything that Microsoft now refers to as "Basic Disks," some of your comments above would definitely be in error.

But before I go into that, let me say I'm glad you brought this up, since most servers no longer use simple "Basic Disk" configurations, and there should be an article which addresses what is commonly found on such systems! However, the present article has always (so far at least) reflected "Disk partitioning" on Basic Disks only. We need to ask some very experienced AND computer savvy Wikipedia editors if they believe the topic should be covered under different articles (maybe such articles already exist!), or if the present article should be altered to include both "Basic" and what Microsoft calls "Dynamic Disks."

As to your comment: "A partition is a way of dividing up space in a volume." That is incorrect! The term "volume" or "logical volume" (at least under "Basic Disks"), is either equivalent in size to a partition or smaller than a partition, but you never divide a volume into partitions. A primary NTFS partition (on a "Basic Disk") will always be one sector larger than the Volume it contains. It is not the Volume boot record sector, but rather a 'backup' boot sector that it stores in the last sector of the partition. And all extended partitions, of which there should be only one per disk, will contain one or more "logical drive volumes" within it.

When we move to "Dynamic Disk" schemes, a logical volume can 'span' across more than one physical hard disk! Will discuss this further at a later date. Daniel B. Sedory (talk) 22:11, 11 February 2008 (UTC)

I have just a few minutes to add a bit more: You can define any word however you want, but that won't change how it's already being used by computer industry leaders, techs, journals, etc. This made me search Wikipedia for its use, and I found the article: Volume_(computing). It does point out that volumes can exist without partitions and that volumes can span physical disks, etc., but begins by describing a volume as: "a single accessible storage area with a single file system, typically (though not necessarily) resident on a single partition of a hard disk."

As to your comment, "one can write a 'filesystem' directly to a block device and skip the partitioning altogether," is this really any different than writing a raw image file to a floppy or hard disk drive under a Windows OS?! Unless you meant something entirely different, the 'file system' you speak of would still have to be formatted or even partitioned first and then formatted before being written to the disk. Perhaps you meant how some devices, such as a USB stick, etc. can easily be set up as a single volume (no MBR sector)? But these too could also be partitioned if I wanted them to be (except for using a diskette in a real floppy drive). The main point in all of this is that partitions are never within a volume, but the opposite is quite often true! Daniel B. Sedory (talk) 10:54, 13 February 2008 (UTC)

"Disk partition" versus "disk partitioning"

WP:VERB says "do not use verbs for article titles if there is a more appropriate noun title". It's true that, when initially creating partitions, one describes it as "partitioning the drive". However, discussion and documentation seems to use the noun form much more frequently... primary partition, partition table, swap partition, etc. In my opinion, the article should be renamed to "disk partition". --Underpants (talk) 04:27, 14 June 2008 (UTC)