Partitioning Your Hard Disk
 
 

Divide and Rule
Partitioning your hard disk boosts your PC’s performance. But how does  this work? And how do you go about doing it?

You just installed an amazing new racing game that all your friends are talking about, or perhaps a new office suite guaranteed to boost office productivity. The installation program says it will take up about 100 MB of your hard disk space. But when you check the free space in your drive after installation, you find that almost 140 MB of your hard disk space has disappeared! Now how did that happen? Where did that extra 40 MB of space go? In fact your hard disk space has been decreasing rather disproportionately compared to the size of the programs you’ve been installing on it. Is it time to go to your vendor and give him a piece of your mind for selling you a defective hard disk? Before you pick up that phone, hold on. The problem isn’t with the hard disk. It’s with the way it’s been partitioned.

Partitioning is a way to divide a large hard drive into smaller virtual drives or partitions. This does not mean you have to physically disassemble your hard drive and rebuild it! All partitioning does is to make the computer think that you have several hard drives, when you really have only one. And this can be accomplished with software utilities designed for the purpose.

Reclaim lost hard disk space

Believe it or not, if you have a drive larger than 1 GB in capacity, more than 40% of the space on it may not be even being used! This is because data is stored in an inefficient manner on your hard disk. Chances are that if you are still using DOS or Windows 95, you are stuck with an archaic file system called FAT16. Let’s take a brief look at how space is wasted on your hard disk under FAT16.

How are files saved on your hard disk? A file is usually stored in several clusters spread all over the hard disk. Windows keeps track of the files using a File Allocation Table. Each cluster is of a fixed size (depending on your hard disk size) and is allocated to only one file. If you have a 2.1 GB hard drive, then from the table here you can see that your cluster size would be 32 kB. What does this mean? It means that if you store a file that is less than 32 kB in size, it would take up a minimum of 32 kB. For example, if you store a file of 10 kB on your 2.1 GB drive, 22 kB would go to waste. What if you have to store a file that’s 33 kB in size? Can you guess what will happen? The file takes up one cluster of 32 kB and another cluster of 32 kB. But it uses up only 1 kB out of the 32 kB in the second cluster. You end up wasting an enormous 31 kB of space to save a 33 kB file! No wonder your hard disk runs out of space so quickly!

In FAT16, you are limited to 65,536 clusters per partition. This means that you can have a maximum hard disk size of 2.1 GB. Beyond this, partitioning the hard disk is a necessity. So if you have a 5.4 GB hard disk for example, you could partition it into two partitions of 2.1 GB each and another partition of 1.2 GB (you could also partition it into three partitions of 1.8 GB in size if you prefer that). The important thing to remember is to keep the partition size below 2.1 GB. Partitioning your disk into smaller sized partitions of 512 MB and 1.2 GB will reduce the cluster size. The smaller the partition, the smaller is the cluster size (see the table). And smaller the cluster size, the lesser is the space wasted.

If you work on Windows 98 (or Win 95 OSR2) you are using the FAT32 file system instead of the severely limited FAT16 file system. In FAT32, the cluster size is as low as 4 kB for partitions smaller than 8 GB. This goes up to 16 kB for disk sizes of up to 16 GB. Also the maximum partition size in FAT32 is a fairly sufficient 2 TB (2 TB = 2048 GB!). Even if you use Windows 98 though, as you will soon see, partitioning your drives provide you with invaluable options like working in a multiple OS environment and organizing your data.

Get organized

One potential problem you might be facing while working with a large hard drive is the problem of organizing your data and programs. Although you can create folders to store your applications and data, partitions can provide a general level of organization when compared to folders. For example, if you have a PC at home you could assign a partition for your spouse, a partition for your children’s games and educational software and another partition for your business applications and data. You can also set aside a partition to keep a backup of your data and the applications you use on a regular basis. If ever your data gets corrupted or an application crashes, you can retrieve the backup version from this partition. Programs like PartitionMagic provide some great security features like hiding a partition you don’t want others to know about.

Work on multiple operating systems

Sometimes you may want to run more than one operating system on your PC. Here’s an example. You finally installed Windows 98. But now you miss working in Windows 95 (Maybe you have applications that work perfectly in Windows 95 but crash at every turn in Windows 98). Some days when you have nothing better to do you wish you could relive those days of working in the Windows 3.1 and DOS 6.2 environment again, just for old times sake. And you would really like to try working on LINUX to see what everyone is raving about. If the idea of working in so many different environments appeals to you, then partitioning your drive is the way to go. Different operating systems have different ways of organizing the data and applications used with it. In other words, different operating systems use different file systems. You can keep various operating systems on one drive by keeping them separately, in their own secure partitions. Some partitioning programs like PartitionMagic provide a Boot Manager program that will let you easily select which operating system you want to use when you start your machine.

Before you partition

All hard disks need to be partitioned before they can be used. Newly purchased hard disks are usually configured with a single large partition. This single partition is called the primary partition (shows up as C: in My Computer unless it’s been renamed). This is referred to as the active partition and it cannot be divided further. You can create up to four primary partitions on one disk, but only one can be the active partition at any time, the others being hidden.

If you want to divide your hard disk into smaller partitions, you need to create an extended partition. An extended partition can be divided into logical partitions which can be assigned names from D: to Z:. All logical partitions added together equal the size of the extended partition. The extended partition itself cannot have a drive letter or hold information like the primary partition. Think of an extended partition, as a container that holds the logical partitions, which actually store the information. As an example, say you have a 4.2 GB hard disk. You could create a 2.1 GB primary partition. The remaining 2.1 GB can be used as an extended partition. You could divide this extended partition into two logical partitions of 512 MB and 1.5 GB. Thus you would have three partitions in all, one primary partition of 2.1 GB (say C:), one 512 MB partition (D:), and one 1.5 GB (E:).

Partitioning tools

When it comes down to partitioning your drive, you have a number of options before you. Two of the more popular ones are:

a) FDISK which comes as part of DOS and Windows

b) A commercial partitioning program like PartitionMagic for Windows 95/98

FDISK

FDISK is a partitioning utility that runs in the DOS environment. The very thought of using a utility in the unfriendly DOS environment might cause most Win 95/98 aficionados to break into a cold sweat. Although FDISK can be run in Windows, it would almost certainly lead to complications that might result in data loss and/or a system crash. It is cumbersome to use and highly confusing. And one of its biggest drawbacks is that when you use FDISK to create partitions, you have to format your hard drive. FDISK is clearly not meant for the novice computer user. Be sure to back up your data before using FDISK.

If you want to create partitions on your hard drive using FDISK, here’s how to go about it. Remember that FDISK erases all your data, so you need to backup your work before you proceed. We will consider a case where we have a 4.2 GB drive and we want to create 3 partitions, one 2 GB and two 1.1 GB sized partitions. This will give you a good idea how to go about partitioning your drive using FDISK. You will need a boot disk with FDISK.EXE and FORMAT.COM before you start.

After booting with the boot disk, type fdisk at the prompt and press Enter.

You may be asked if you want to enable "large disk support". Enter Y if you want to enable FAT32 or N if you don’t. If you enabled this, any partitions over 500 MB that you create will be FAT32. If you did not enable it, you cannot create a partition larger than 2 GB in size.

From the main menu, select "1. Create DOS partition or Logical DOS Drive". You will then be asked if you want to use the maximum available size of the disk for the primary partition and set it active. Enter N and you will be shown the size of your entire disk in MB.

Enter the size of the primary partition in MB (2000 in our present case). FDISK will create a primary partition and assign it the letter C:. Press the Esc key to return to the main menu.

Select "2: Set active partition" and then select partition 1. FDISK will set this partition as the active partition. Press the Esc key to again return to the main menu.

Next, select "1: Create DOS partition or Logical DOS Drive" from the menu and then select "2: Create Extended DOS partition". When prompted, press Enter to select the entire remaining area of the disk for the extended DOS partition. FDISK will then create the extended DOS partition.

Enter the size of the first logical partition in MB (1100 in our case). FDISK will create the partition and label it D: and then flash the message "Logical DOS Drive created, drive letters changed or added".

After a while FDISK will prompt you to enter the size of the next logical partition. Enter the size of the partition desired in MB (1100 again). When all partitions have been created, FDISK will show the message "All available space in the Extended DOS partition has been assigned to logical drives". Press the Esc key to exit FDISK.

Reboot your system with the boot floppy. At the A: prompt, type format c:/s. The /s part will make the C: drive bootable. You will get a message which says "WARNING: all data on non-removable disk C: will be lost. Proceed with format (Y/N)?" Press Y since there isn’t any data in drive C: to begin with. When you get the A: prompt again, repeat the procedure by typing format d: and format e: for the remaining two drives.

Finally remove the boot floppy and reboot the system. It will reboot to the C: prompt by itself. Pat yourself on the back. You’ve successfully partitioned a hard disk.

PartitionMagic

PartitionMagic is a very useful and powerful partitioning program from PowerQuest, designed to eliminate the headaches associated with partitioning your drive. It can effortlessly create, move, convert and resize partitions on your hard disk without your having to reformat it and erasing your valuable data. Its latest version, 4.0, has been especially designed for the Win 95/98. You can use PartitionMagic to

PartitionMagic is very the easey to use. You can find a demo of PartitionMagic at http://www.powerquest .com/partitionmagic/pmdemo.html.

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