1. Introduction1.1. What is a partition?
Partitioning is a means to divide a single hard drive into many
logical drives. A partition is a contiguous set of blocks on a drive
that are treated as an independant disk. A partition table (the
creation of which is the topic of this HOWTO) is
an index that relates sections of the hard drive to partitions.
Why have multiple partitions?
Encapsulate your data. Since file system corruption is local to
a partition, you stand to lose only some of your data if an
accident occurs.
Increase disk space efficiency. You can format partitions with
varying block sizes, depending on your usage. If your data is in
a large number of small files (less than 1k) and your partition
uses 4k sized blocks, you are wasting 3k for every file. In
general, you waste on average one half of a block for every
file, so matching block size to the average size of your files
is important if you have many files.
Limit data growth. Runaway processes or maniacal users can
consume so much disk space that the operating system no longer
has room on the hard drive for its bookkeeping operations. This
will lead to disaster. By segregating space, you ensure that
things other than the operating system die when allocated disk
space is exhausted.
1.2. Other Partitioning Software:
sfdisk: a command-line version of fdisk cfdisk: a curses-based version of fdisk parted: Gnu partition editor Partition Magic:
a commercial utility to create, resize, merge and convert partitions, without destroying data.
Disk Drake: a Perl/Gtk program to create, rsize, and delete partitions
1.4. Additional information on your system:
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