Talk:Disk partitioning

message: 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)
thread_title: Merger

message: 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)
replies: text: I added a blurb about this when I rewrote the article a bit. Fiskars007 21:19, 10 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: What about file systems that don't use boot records?   Is the concept of an extended boot record something that concerns PC users, and nobody else?   Dexter Nextnumber (talk) 06:42, 4 January 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes, the EBR is specific to the PC BIOS partitioning scheme - as is the MBR. Letdorf (talk) 17:44, 4 January 2010 (UTC)
thread_title: Extended partitions?

message: 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)
thread_title: 1024 sector limitation

message: 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)
thread_title:  XOSL link 

message: 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)
thread_title:  Extended/logical partitions 

message: 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)
replies: text: Google. ;^ ] 68.64.175.222 22:45, 26 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Hardlink attacks 

message: 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)
replies: text: 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)

text: 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)
replies: text:  We no longer have a slice (disk) article; we have a slice (disk) redirect to this article, with the article now mentioning that "slice" is a term used for disk partitions in Solaris and FreeBSD.  Should BSD disklabel be merged here as well?  Or should it be left separate, as it's a particular mechanism used to partition disks, just like the MBR mechanism? Guy Harris (talk) 20:27, 22 March 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Too technical 

message: 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)
replies: text: 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)
thread_title:  windows partition setup?? 

message: 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)
replies: text: 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)
replies: text: 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)
replies: text: This is no longer used by Microsoft windows. DG12 (talk)  —Preceding undated comment added 00:50, 11 August 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  One technical detail 

message: On Primary, Logical and Extended Partitions. BKmetic 14:29, 17 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I added a mention of them - they should be expanded.  I will mark it as a stub. Fiskars007 21:19, 10 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Needs more info. 

message: 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)
replies: text: 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)
thread_title:  UNIX partitions?? 

message: 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)
replies: text: Both words, "partition" and "partitioning", can be nouns or verbs, depending on their use in a sentence.  Since an article title isn't a sentence, there's no way to determine which part of speech is intended.  Giving Wikipedia the benefit of the doubt, I'd consider them both nouns when used as titles of articles, so WP:VERB doesn't apply. Unfree (talk) 17:31, 13 August 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  "Disk partition" versus "disk partitioning" 

message: From the article: "This partition is expected to: occupy the outer tracks of the hard drive, more than double the throughput, more than half the access time."
I suspect the editor intended to say "more than halve".  I'd change that, considering that more than half isn't as good as less than half, which was probably intended, but what about the verb-noun confusion? Unfree (talk) 17:20, 13 August 2009 (UTC)
thread_title: Halve

message: Interesting but not included. Yet. --88.148.208.54 (talk) 12:22, 30 August 2009 (UTC)
thread_title: Block size

message: I tried to read the main page to this article and remain confused.
There are lots of file systems that support the concept of a "partition" but the main article seems to proceed on the theory that the user is using (and is familiar with) PC compatible harddrives, on which many partitions may be found.   But I am not a PC user, and don't understand how PC harddrives work.   I have only theory to fall back on, and since I don't have a PC compatible, I find their method of solving the overflow problem to be less than interesting.   In fact, most of the article on that account could be deleted because it is not particularly notable to those who do not own PCs.
How does a typical file system usually deal with an overflow condition?   Does the partition automatically expand, as by automatically editing itself, and thus getting bigger?   Or does the file system automatically create a new partition, and deposit the overflow there?   Dexter Nextnumber (talk) 06:33, 4 January 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: Typically, nothing happens when a filesystem becomes full. Resizing and creating new partitions or filesystems is usually a manual intervention. Letdorf (talk) 17:52, 4 January 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: So the data is lost?   Dexter Nextnumber (talk) 00:39, 5 January 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Overflows and error recovery? 

message: Is there a way of determining which partitions receive file read/write errors?   And if there are, which partition receives the error codes?  Or errors relating to misused channels?  Is this sorted in any way?  Is there at least one file system that automatically creates new partitions when old partitions are full, or when they approach a near-critical density?   Dexter Nextnumber (talk) 06:39, 4 January 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Depositing error codes? 

message: For those of us who are much more familiar with BAMs than FATs, how many file systems define their partitions in terms of allocated cylinders and volumes?    I can't be the only one who thinks the FAT system is way too clumsy to be of any practical use.  Dexter Nextnumber (talk) 00:49, 5 January 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Cylinder and volume allocations? 

message: ahmad shoaib ahmad khan say that partation is the deviding the harddisk  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 119.73.4.192 (talk) 11:28, 26 February 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  what is partation 

message: "Having an area for operating system virtual memory swapping/paging." I'm not saying this is wrong, but is this an actual benefit? Just about every disk, even one with a single partition, already has such an area. If the disk is partitioned, then the page file will be limited to one partition. One theoretical advantage is that the read/write heads will not have as far to travel, as mentioned under "Short stroking". On the other hand, the page file may become fragmented, forfeiting some of those advantages.
Is there any objective evidence showing that it is faster or otherwise better to place a page file on a separate partition? Marzolian (talk) 20:31, 11 May 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: What this statement is referring to is a swap partition, ie. a raw partition (without a filesystem on it) used entirely for swap space.  Older UNIX and UNIX-like OSs didn't support swap files, so swap partitions were the only option. For systems that support both, in theory, a swap partition should be faster, as pages are read and written directly from/to the disk device, without the overhead of filesystem I/O. In addition, some UNIX systems can use a swap partition for temporary storage of system crash dumps in the event of a kernel panic. See, for instance . Letdorf (talk) 21:41, 11 May 2010 (UTC)
thread_title: Benefits

message: The current text of the article discusses partitioning of disks on a PC, where the partioning information is carried on the disk itself. Is partitioning software where the data structures are external to the disk in scope, e.g., minidisks in CP-67 and VM? Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz Username:Chatul (talk) 15:16, 31 December 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes, I'd say partitioning systems where there is no on-disk partition table should be included, if reliable sources can be cited. Regards, Letdorf (talk) 22:17, 3 January 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Scope of article? 

message: I'm just wondering that there is virtually no Software known that declares to lossles resize partitions. For now i only see FIPS and ntfsresize. (Both with quite limited scope) --Itu (talk) 00:52, 9 January 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  lossless resizing? 

message: For http://www.lissot.net/partition/partition-03.html message: The domain name you have requested isn't available
--92.36.130.23 (talk) 16:30, 22 February 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  dead link lissot.net 

message: For http://www.lissot.net/partition/partition-03.html message: The domain name you have requested isn't available
--92.36.130.23 (talk) 16:30, 22 February 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  dead link lissot.net 

message: This article can be improved. I have C drive. However, I want to split this into two. However, I want to preserve the file data. I think a program like Partition Magic, seem to be able to create a partition without loosing data. However, there are a lot of programs out there, which do not preserve existing data on the disk. 
can there be additional information about programs which preserve user files versus programs which do not?
Thx,
:Wikipedia is not a manual, guidebook, textbook, or scientific journal.  There could be such information, but relying on Wikipedia as the place to get such information is unwise. Guy Harris (talk) 21:38, 8 April 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Not destroying users files when parititions a disk 

message: The "PC partition types" sections currently states that the "total data storage space of a PC HDD can contain at most four primary partitions, or alternatively three primary partitions and an extended partition." This only applies to MBR (as confirmed by the sentence that follows). Is seems that most new computers now come with GPT instead of MBR. Shouldn't there be a mention that GPT has no such limit and no notion of extended partitions? 24.202.251.80 (talk) 18:48, 12 September 2016 (UTC)
replies: text: I added clarifications to avoid misleading readers into thinking that MBR is current technology. 24.202.251.80 (talk) 00:45, 19 September 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  Primary partitions limit 

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thread_title:  External links modified 

message: This entire article should be scrapped and rewritten by someone who isn't an "armchair computer expert" with no technical knowledge of non-PC systems.
The fundamental error being propagated throughout this article is the equating of a partition with a filesystem.  In the Linux and Windows world, that is often the case.  However, a partition and a filesystem are fundamentally different structures.  The former is an arbitrarily chosen fraction of the total raw disk space.  The latter is the organization of some or all of that fraction of total disk space.
Using x86 architecture hardware as an example, the bootstrap code in the machine's firmware has no knowledge whatsoever of partitions or filesystems.  It only knows enough to load physical sector zero (the "boot block") of the selected boot device—which is not necessarily a disk drive—into core at some agreed-upon location, examine the core image for a starting vector and then execute the code pointed to by that vector.  That code, in turn, could examine the boot sector image for a partition table, search the table for a partition in which second stage boot code would be found, load that code from the boot device and execute it, and so on.
Or, the boot block could contain only a basic bootstrap program that merely loads subsequent blocks from the boot device and treats them as a program, a practice that was quite common with proprietary minicomputers of days gone by.  In other words, partitioning is not required to use a disk, build a filesystem or load an operating system.  Partitioning is a convenience that allows more than one operating system to be present on the same storage medium.
A filesystem can exist on a disk that is not partitioned, as a filesystem organizes raw space, which in this case would be part or all of the entire disk's raw space.  There have been many computer systems that had no partitioning of any kind on their disks.  Try thinking outside of the PC world for a change.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 38.69.12.5 (talk) 20:48, 4 April 2017 (UTC)
replies: text: Oh, heck, you don't even need a file system. In the old days in the IBM mainframe world, disk storage was simply assigned to site-defined "data sets" (files) in terms of ranges of cylinder numbers, managed by the site. There were no files or directories or anything else you'd recognize as a "file system". Jeh (talk) 20:33, 18 July 2018 (UTC)
replies: text:  Jeh, the IBM/360 OS and DOS disks had file systems. The metadata were: volume label (~ superblock), VTOC (~ directory) and file label for each file. The "data set" was the official term but anyone called it "file".
78.29.74.199 (talk) 09:45, 29 November 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  Poorly-written article 

message: These things have existed completely unreferenced for over five years and been tagged as OR/CN for almost two. I'm deleting them. I will delete them again if they're restored without a reference to a RS for every claim. Jeh (talk) 20:40, 18 July 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  "Advantages" and "Disadvantages" sections 

message: "The Windows Disk Manager in Windows Vista and Windows 7 utilizes a 1 MB partition alignment scheme which is fundamentally incompatible with Windows 2000, XP, OS/2, DOS as well as many other operating systems"
Any new and old OS may use not-aligned partitions. For devices with physical block size is 512 it works perfectly. For devices with larger physical blocks it still works but with decreased performance.
And older OS will also work with new aligned partitioning and even get advantage of better performance.
The only incompatibility is possible if offset 63 sectors for the first partition was hardcoded by someone (too silly).
78.29.74.199 (talk) 08:59, 29 November 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  Where is incompatibility? 

message: The stub Partition table does not contain enough content to merit a second article. Ethanpet113 (talk) 11:18, 20 September 2020 (UTC)
replies: text: Its been forever since someone replied to this, so, support, and I'm gonna go ahead and merge it. Feel free to revert me if I'm wrong. WhoAteMyButter (📨│📝) 21:18, 26 March 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  Proposed merge of [[Partition table]] into [[Disk partitioning]] 

message: A partition is a partition, it is the divider between spaces, not the actual space. 218.214.190.174 (talk) 10:45, 1 January 2022 (UTC)
replies: text: In the computing field, it's the space.  In this case, the divider isn't a physical object taking up space (a wall between two rooms takes up space that belongs to neither room, but that's not the case for partitions in primary or secondary storage).  See, for example, the Lexico definition for UK English and the Lexico definition for US English which list, as definitions 2.1 and 1.3, respectively, for "partition", "Each of a number of portions into which some operating systems divide memory or storage." as the definition in "Computing". Guy Harris (talk) 18:28, 1 January 2022 (UTC)
replies: text: When studying computer science we learned a partition is what you put between two logical drives.  If you think it is the actual logic drive, how many partitions do you have by default on your floppy disc?  218.214.190.174 (talk) 3:28, 27 January 2022 (UTC)
replies: text: I don't have floppy discs any more, but, when I did, they had one by default, taking up the entire drive. Guy Harris (talk) 01:07, 27 January 2022 (UTC)
replies: text: My recollection is that under MS and PC DOS FDs could not be partitioned.  Regardless, Microsoft's 1988 MS-DOS Encyclopedia (p. 90-91) clearly describes and depicts partitions as the space allocated and not the divider.  Tom94022 (talk) 07:38, 27 January 2022 (UTC)

text: I don't know who teaches that "a partition is what you put between two logical drives", but anybody who does is apparently under the illusion that you put something betweenn two logical drivers; it's quite possible for the last block of one logical drive to be followed immediately by the first block of the next logical drive, with the only thing between them being whatever separates any pair of blocks on the physical drive, even if those two blocks are part of the same partition. Guy Harris (talk) 05:03, 4 February 2022 (UTC)

text: "A fixed disk can be divided up into separate areas called partitions." (page 4-3), "In order that more than one operating system can use the fixed disk, the fixed disk must be dividied into separate areas called partitions." (page 4-12), "The space within a given partition is contiguous," (page G-1), "Each partition can contain a boot record on its first sector, and any other programs or data that you chose--including a copy of an operating system." (page G-2), "The number of sectors allocated to the partition is kept in the '# of sects' field." (page G-7) -- IBM Disk Operating System, First Edition (January 1983), Version 2.00.  This pretty clearly states that the partition is a disk area, not a demarcation between two such areas, and that the partition contains data, rather than being something between areas of data. I'm not aware of any reference to a disk "partition" earlier than January 1983, though there was alternate terminology on other systems prior to that date, so I think this may be definitive for "partition". Also, if the partition were a demarcation between two areas, then deleting a partition would merge two areas into a single area, but that is not what happens. In IBM DOS, MS-DOS, and most Microsoft and Microsoft-compatible operating systems, floppy disks have no partitions at all, and have no partition table, as the entire floppy is usually used to contain a filesystem. Even though a hard disk (or equivalent) on a PC can be configured as a single storage space, that normally is a partition and such a drive normally does have a partition table. --Brouhaha (talk) 00:50, 1 February 2022 (UTC)
replies: text:  It’s partition in the sense of partition of a set, not a partition between two rooms.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by Peter Flass (talk • contribs) 00:07, 4 February 2022 (UTC)
replies: text:  And see Partition (disambiguation) for some additional uses of the noun "partition" that don't use it to refer to an object that's placed between two items. Guy Harris (talk) 05:02, 4 February 2022 (UTC)
thread_title:  Definition of partition in this article is wrong