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4:07:34 pm on 1/7/09

Hard Drive Partitions Explained!
Posted by Scott August 19th, 2006 | 5,253 words |

Partitions!
what are they and what do they mean?

What is this tutorial? - I’ve gotten a lot of questions lately like the following:

"what are partitions?"

"how do I change my partitions?"

"how do I partition my hard drive for linux?"

"will linux erase windows?"

"can I run windows on the same computer as linux?"

I figured the easiest way to answer all these partition questions I get is
to just write it all up on a page and point people to it whenever they have
a question. This page doesn’t actually teach you how to do anything,
but it does teach you about partitions so you can use the knowledge in your
decisions.

What is a partition? - A partition is a part of a hard drive.

What’re partitions for? - A partition is a "holder" for your operating system.
Windows uses a partition. Linux uses partitions. BSD uses partitions. Usually,
most computers only have one partition for one operating system. But we
aren’t normal, are we?

Windows partition? - Windows uses a single partition to install all of its junk to. In fact, when
you look at your "c" drive, your "c" drive isn’t actually
the whole hard drive. It’s just the partition (part) of it you allowed windows
to see.

Can you have 2 or more partitions? - yes! Let’s say you had a special need to install
windows 98 and windows xp on the same computer. You could create 2 partitions
on the hard drive. You can give the first one to windows98, and the second
one to windows XP.

What about space? - Partition sizes are measured in bytes. A gigabyte (1,000,000,000 bytes) is
the most common reference to partition size. For an example, lets say you
wanted to run windows 98 and xp on the same machine. You have a 20gig hard
drive. You want windows 98 to have 5 gigs, and windows xp to have 15 gigs.
You could create your first partition as 5gb in size and the second 15gb,
and install windows 98 in the first and xp in the second.

2 Windows, ok. What about Win&Linux? - Pretty much the same thing. If you
wanted to run windows and linux on the same hard drive, you could split it
into two* partitions. Install windows on one of them, and linux on the other.

How do I go from one OS to the other? - You can either have a menu come up when
you start your computer asking you what OS you want to boot, or you can make
a boot disk to give you the menu. The later is less convenient and more sluggish.
If you’re using a linux distribution like slackware or redhat, these options
are asked during the installation. And, yes, this means to switch from one
os to the other, you have to reboot. (you can also get into hardware emulation
to boot the partition in a window on your current os with a program like vmware,
but i’m not going to get into that here)

- - - EXAMPLES! - - -

Meet Mr. Pizza

no toppings

no partitions

completely useless

Yes, I know, I’m crazy.
Anyway, say hello to Mr. Pizza. If you actually said hello, you’re an
idiot. Anyway, this is a pizza. At least, a weird photoshop impression
of a pizza. Back off!

This pizza represents something. It’s your hard drive. I can’t get too detailed with this illustration (it is just a pizza folks) so work
with me here.

The toppings represent partitions. Different toppings are different partitions. So, what do the toppings tell you about this pizza? Right.
No toppings, no partitions. This would represent your hard drive fresh
out of the box. With no partitions, your hard drive is useless! Without
partitions, your pizza is pretty sad looking also.

Common Pizza

all pepperoni

all windows

only windows

As you can see, the most common pizza on the face of the planet.

The entire thing is covered with pepperonis!

Let’s pretend the pepperoni represents windows. To be accurate, the pepperoni represents a windows partition.

So, what does this mean? Well, pepperonis are over the entire pizza! This means, the entire pizza (hard drive) contains completely and nothing
but pepperoni (windows).

This pizza is good if you only want pepperoni, but what if you want something other than "the most common anywhere"? Sure, you
could always cover the pizza with pineapple or something instead, but
what if you need your pepperoni, but want to have alternatives accessible
at the same time?

This requires multiple partitions. Multiple sections. In this example, we’ll make 2 parts by splitting the pizza in half. We want half one
thing, and half another. How do we do this?

Preparing Pizza

half pepperoni

half untopped

half windows

half empty

usable for windows

lots of unused space

Well, we have to start from scratch**

This time, instead of sloppily throwing pepperonis all over the entire pizza, you’ll create a section where you want the pepperoni to go. This
section (partition) will contain only your pepperoni (windows) toppings.

Why pepperoni first? Well, pepperonis are pathetically stupid, and simply can’t comprehend what it’s like to not be the first topping
placed on the pizza. A pain? Yeah, it is. I think its a cross between
its own incompetence and its emotional status.

So, to put 2 toppings on a pizza, you put pepperoni on first - only covering 1/2 the pizza. Leave the other half empty (free space).

**note: starting from scratch means that in order to do this, the entire pizza (hard drive) has to be cleared, and the toppings (partitions)
are planned from the beginning. You cannot just throw away 1/2 of a
topping, you have to remove the whole thing. In other words, you can’t
resize a partition. You have to completely erase it and make a new one
(of the desired size).

Mixed Pizza!

half pepperoni

half oreo

half windows

half linux

usable for windows

usable for linux

Now it’s time to add our second topping!

I love oreo’s, don’t you? Good, our second topping will be oreo’s They will represent linux.

How do I put the oreo’s on? Easy! Just drop ‘em where the free space is.

When you’re done, you’ll have a perfect setup!

Your pepperoni is there, completely working, with all its functionality. The only difference is instead of it covering the ENTIRE pizza, it only
covers half. (resulting in drive C’s space being cut in half)

Your oreo’s are on there! This means that you can use them to their full potential. They’re on half the pizza (so they have the other have
of the hard drive’s space).

Why’s this so good? Oreo’s are awesome! But sometimes people just can’t seem to shake their false need for pepperoni. Nonetheless, they can
have both. It’s a little more work, but when it’s done, it’s great!
You get the benefits from both toppings.

Who would benefit from this? You know addicted smokers who use ‘the patch’ as a transition to go from smoking to non smoking? Well, windows
is your addictive nicotine. Linux is freedom. The 1/2 and 1/2 method
is like the patch. It lightly gives in to your cravings, but giving
you a good stepping stone to experience what it’s like free from your
addiction

Conclusion - I hope I’ve cleared up some questions you may have had on hard drive partitioning. This tutorial was very
basic (how many partitioning tutorials do you see pizzas on) so don’t nag
me about intricate details being incorrect. If you have any questions about
this article, contact me about it! I’ll answer your question and post it on
the site. Hope you got something from it!

*linux utilizes multiple partitions for optimization. the swap file (cache/scratch file) has its own file system on its own partition
that is usually twice the size of your ram. 128mb ram, you want a 256mb swap
partition. Very small, but very useful. For ease, i’ll refer to linux as wanting
a single partition to keep simplicity in this article.

**starting from scratch means that in order to do this, the entire pizza (hard drive) has to be cleared, and the toppings
(partitions) are planned from the beginning. You cannot just throw away 1/2
of a topping, you have to remove the whole thing. In other words, you can’t
resize a partition. You have to completely erase it and make a new one (of
the desired size).