Partition

What Does Partition Mean?

A partition, or disk partition, is a logical division on a hard disk drive (HDD) that enables a PC to have different drives. A partition divides the hard drive into several logical storage units on one drive but functions as multiple drives. A software program called a partition editor can be used to construct, delete, resize, and control a partition on the HDD.

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Partitions can also be referred to as slices.

Techopedia Explains Partition

On Microsoft operating systems, a hard disk is divided into drives. The first drive has one drive in the partition called the primary drive and is generally “C:”, which is the active partition that boots the OS. Extended partitions can be added such as “D:” and “E:” have more than one drive and are used for other storage such as programs, data files, CD-ROM, or USB drives.

A Unix OS such as Linux and some older versions of Mac OS X use multiple partitions on a disk from secondary storage called swap partitioning or paging. This type of partition scheme allows directories with a file system hierarchy standard (FHS) or home directory to be assigned their own file systems. A typical Linux system has two partitions that hold a file system that is attached to “/”, which is located in the root directory or swap partition. Generally, an unlimited number of partitions can be created in a Linux OS. A Mac OS X system uses one partition for the whole file system. It uses a swap file method within the file system instead of a swap partition.

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Margaret Rouse

Margaret Rouse is an award-winning technical writer and teacher known for her ability to explain complex technical subjects to a non-technical, business audience. Over the past twenty years her explanations have appeared on TechTarget websites and she's been cited as an authority in articles by the New York Times, Time Magazine, USA Today, ZDNet, PC Magazine and Discovery Magazine.Margaret's idea of a fun day is helping IT and business professionals learn to speak each other’s highly specialized languages. If you have a suggestion for a new definition or how to improve a technical explanation, please email Margaret or contact her…