First, what is partition?
The partition is essentially a format for the hard disk. When we create a partition, the physical parameters of the hard disk have been set, specify the hard disk main boot record (ie Master Boot Record, generally simply referred to as MBR) and boot the storage of backups. The information required for the file system and other operating system management hard drives is achieved by the advanced formatting, namely the format command.
Before installing the operating system and software, you must first need to partition the hard disk (ie, the FAT area of the hard disk) and format it, and then save the various information using the hard disk. Many people think that since the partition must divide the hard disk into several parts, in fact, we can only create only one partition that uses all or part of the hard disk space. However, no matter how many partitions we have divided, no matter whether the SCSI hard drive or IDE hard drive, you must set the main partition of the hard disk to an active partition so that the system can be started through the hard disk.
Second, extended partitions and logical partitions:
The C drive is the primary partition, and the remaining hard disk space can be used as an extension partition, and the logical partition (ie D disk, etc.) is divided in the extended partition.
The DOS and FAT file systems were originally designed to support up to 24 partitions on a hard disk, using 24 drives from C to Z. However, the partition table in the main boot record can only contain four partition records. In order to effectively solve this problem, the DOS partition command fdisk allows users to create an extension partition and establish up to 23 logical partitions in the extended partition, where Each partition is allocated separately, which can be used by a computer as a separate physical device. The information regarding the logical partition is stored in the extended partition, while the information of the main partition and extension partition is saved within the MBR of the hard disk. This is to say that regardless of how many partitions have a partition in the hard disk, and its main startup contains only the primary partition (that is, the bart partition) and the expansion partition two partitions.
Third, partition format (control over the hard disk FAT area):
1, FAT16
For the old "bird" of the computer, the format of this hard disk is the most familiar, and we are mostly through this partition format and step into the computer threshold. It uses a 16-bit file allocation table that can support the maximum partition for 2GB -
Watch:, it is currently the most widely used disk partition format that supports the most of the operating system supports, almost all operating systems support this format, from DOS, Win 3.x, Win 95, Win 97 to Win 98 Windows NT, WIN 2000 / XP, even hot for a moment of Linux supports this partition format.
But the FAT16 partition format has a maximum shortcoming, that is, the actual utilization efficiency of the hard disk is low. Because in the DOS and Windows systems, the distribution of disk files is in clusters, and a cluster is only assigned to a file, regardless of this file occupies the entire cluster capacity. Moreover, the size of each cluster is determined by the size of the hard disk partition, the larger the partition, the greater the cluster. For example, a 1GB hard disk is only divided by a zone, then the size of the cluster is 32KB, that is, even one file is only one-byte length, the storage is also 32KB hard disk space, and the remaining space is all idle, so It has led to a great waste of disk space. The larger the partition supported by the FAT16, the greater the capacity of each cluster on the disk, the greater the waste. Therefore, as the current mainstream hard drive is getting bigger and bigger, this disadvantage has become more and more prominent. In order to overcome this weaknesses of FAT16, Microsoft introduced a new disk partition format FAT32 in the WIN 97 operating system.
[Note: Why FAT16 can only support 2GB disks into several cylinders, tracks, sectors. In general, store 512B in one sector. The document tube is basically managed by clusters, and the 1 cluster is 32KB. 16 of FAT16 is a binary position 16, that is, FAT16 can only manage 65,536 clusters, and 65536 * 32 is about 2G, so the maximum partition supported by FAT16 is 2GB. FAT32 According to this type, the maximum partition supported is about 13000G. [www.windsn.com]
2, FAT32
This format uses a 32-bit file allocation table that greatly enhances the management capability of the disk, breaking through the capacity of FAT16 for each partition, and uses the partition format of FAT32, and the user can define a large hard disk. A partition, without having to divide several partitions, greatly facilitating the management of the hard disk. Moreover, FAT32 also has a maximum advantage that each cluster capacity in the FAT32 partition format is fixed to 4KB in a partition that does not exceed 8GB, which can greatly reduce the waste of hard disk space and improve the hard disk. usage efficiency.
Currently, the operating system that supports this disk partition format has Win 97, WIN 98 and WIN 2000 / XP. However, this partition format also has its shortcomings, first in the FAT32 format partition disks, due to the expansion of the file allocation table, the running speed is slower than the hard disk of the FAT16 format partition; in addition, due to the DOS system and some early applications Software does not support this partition format, so after using this partition format, you cannot use old DOS operating systems and some old applications.
3, NTFS
The NTFS partition format is unfamiliar with the general computer user, which is the hard disk partition format of the network operating system Windows NT, and users who use Windows NT must be dealt with this partition format.
Its significant advantage is that safety and stability are extremely excellent, which is not easy to generate file fragments in use, which is good for the space utilization of the hard disk and the speed of software. It can record the user's operation, through very stringent restrictions on user rights, allowing each user to operate according to the permissions given by the system, fully protecting the security of the network system and data. However, there are not many operating systems that currently support this partition format. In addition to Windows NT, the OS above Win 2K also supports this hard disk partition format.
However, unlike Windows NT, Win 2000 uses NTFS 5.0 partition format. NTFS 5.0 has a "disk limit" - administrator can limit the hard disk space that disk users can use; "Encryption" - When reading and writing files from disk, automatically encrypts and decrypt file data.
4, Linux
The Linux operating system is the most popular operating system that IT media has been speculated last year. Since the system is free software, it can be loaded into the computer with hard money, so many users have won many users. Its disk partition format is completely different from other operating systems. There are two formats: one is the Linux Native primary partition, one is Linux SWAP swap partition. These two partition formats are excellent in security and stability. After combining Linux operating systems, the opportunity of crash is greatly reduced, allowing us to get rid of Windows often crash. However, the operating system currently supporting this partition format is only Linux, and users who are not interested in Linux systems can only sigh.
Through the above introduction, I think you must know the partition format of the common hard drive. So, quickly determine the partition format for your hard drive based on the operating system you need to install.
