The Hard disk Structure

Note: The following is in outline format and will be fleshed out later.

Note: file systems will be discussed in the Operating Systems module.

The partitions

Up to 4 partitions in table.

Partitions can be primary partitions, extended partitions or non-DOS partitions.

Extended Partitions can contain logical drives, also called Logical Volumes.

A non-DOS partition is used for other operating systems such as Linux.

Partitioning software

There are several programs for setting up partitions:

FDISK
GParted
Parted Magic
diskpart (Windows command line)