Disk Partitioning

By: Stefano Polo

Overview

Creating divisions on a Hard Disk

Directories and files are then
grouped by categories
Data types
Usage

Partitions contains file systems

Space Management
Access Permissions
Directory Searching

Overview cont.

A file system can decide how many

separate categories of data are
needed and the size of each.
Seperating operating system from user
files

Examples

Partition for Swapping

Keeps frequently used programs and
data near each other

Keeping browser cache files in

separate partitions keeps them away
from each other
Seperating email from audio and
photos

Benefits

The Use of Multi-booting setups

Having more than 1 operating system

Sharing swap partitions between multiple linux

distributions
Allows the need for less memory

Protecting and isolating files

Easy to recover corrupted file systems and operating
systems installed

Increase Computer performance

Smaller file systems are more efficient

Higher level of data organization

Keeping videos, photos, audios, emails, etcseperated

PC Bios Partition Types

Used in MS-Dos, Windows, & Linux

Can contain up to 4 Primary or 1-3
primary and 1 extended
Each partition have 16-byte entries
in the partition table located in the
Master Boot Record
A primary partition contains one file
system

Primary (Logical)

The "partition type" code for a primary or logical

partition can either correspond to a file system
contained within (e.g. 0x07 means either an NTFS
or an OS/2 HPFS file system) or indicate the
partition has a special use (e.g. code 0xBC may
mean an Acronis Secure Zone and code 0x82
usually indicates a Linux swap partition). The
FAT16 and FAT32 file systems have made use of
quite a number of partition type codes over time
due to the limits of various DOS and Windows OS
versions. Though a Linux operating system may
recognize a number of different file systems (ext2,
ext3, reiserfs, etc.), they have all consistently
used the same partition type code: 0x83 (Linux
native). (wikipedia)

NTFS

All file data are stored as metadata

Simply just data about data
May describe individual datum, content item,
or a collection of data

Allows any sequence of 16-bit values for

name encoding
uses B+ trees to index file system data
Master File Table (MFT) contains metadata
about every file, directory, and metafile on
an NTFS volume

File Allocation Table (FAT)

Used mostly today in floppies and solid-state memory cards

(flash memory)
Gives convenience towards sharing data between operating
systems on one machine
Uses a table which contains information on which areas that
belong to files are free or unusable
Table also gives information on where the data is actually
stored
To limit the size of the table, disk space is allocated in
hardware sectors called clusters
Maximum numbers of clusters have increased over time
the number of bits required to identify a cluster is used to
name the successive major versions of the format
Fat12
Fat16
Fat32

Drawbacks of FAT

When files are deleted and new files are

created, directory fragments tend to get
scattered over the entire disk
This causes slow read/write processes

Defragmentation can solve this issue

Can be a lengthy process
Would need to be performed reguraly

Solid-State should not be defragmented

since they tend to wear down eventually

Extended

Secondary to primary partitions

Hard disk may contain 1 extended
partition
Can be sub-divided into logical drives
Each are assigned additonal letter drives

Examples
Primary partition would be C:
Extended partition would be E:, G: etc

Compressed Disks

Compressed to create additional space

Creating one large file in a partition
Storing the disks data in this file

At startup, device drivers open this file

and assign it to a separate letter
To avoid confusion, the original partition
and the compressed drive had their letters
swapped
Compressed disk would be C:
Uncompressed disk were given higher names

Partitioning Schemes

Microsoft
create a single active primary partition,
the C: drive
Where all system, user data,
applications, and page file all reside
Some users, however, prefer to create
multiple partitions so that the operating
system can be stored separately from
other kinds of data.

Partitioning Schemes cont.

Unix
creation of separate partitions for /boot, /home,
/tmp, /usr, /var, /opt, swap and all remaining
files under the "/" (root directory)

Advantages
if one file system gets corrupted, the rest of the
data (the other file systems) stay intact,
minimizing data loss
can be accessed read-only and the execution of
setuid files disabled thus enhancing security
performance may be enhanced due to less disk
head travel

Partitioning Schemes cont.

Disadvantages of Unix scheme partition

user could run out of hard drive space in his or
her /home partition
good implementation requires the user to
predict how much space each partition will
need, which may be a difficult task
Logical Volume Management, often used in
servers, increases flexibility by allowing data in
volumes to expand into separate physical disks
Another option is to resize existing partitions
when necessary.

Partition Recovery

When a partition is deleted, generally only

the table entry is removed
The data is still on the hard disk but maybe
un-accessible
Specialized recovery tools can access the
data and recreate the table entry
Some disk utilities may also overwrite a
number of beginning sectors of a partition
they delete
In this case it may be possible to restore a
FAT32 or NTFS partition if a backup boot
sector is available