A partition divides a hard drive into logical sections for storing files and installing operating systems. There are three types of partitions: primary, extended, and logical. A primary partition can host an operating system, while an extended partition contains logical drives. The master boot record (MBR) stores information on partition locations and boots the system, but is limited to 4 primary partitions under 2.2TB each. The GUID partition table (GPT) replaces MBR and supports over 18 exabytes per partition. GPT uses a protective MBR for compatibility with older systems.

1. PARTITION
Presented By
AMZAD KHAN

2. What Is a Partition?
O The partitioning of a hard drive occurs after the
drive has been physically formatted but before it is
logically formatted. It involves creating areas on
the disk where data will not be mixed
O example, to install different operating systems that
do not use the same file system. Therefore,
logically there will be at least as many partitions
as there are operating systems using different
file systems. If you are using just one operating
system, a single partition of the full size of the disk
is sufficient. That is unless you want to create
several partitions so as to have several drives on
which data is kept separately.

3. O There are three types of partitions: primary
partitions, extended partitions and logical
drives. A disk may contain up to four primary
partitions (only one of which can be active), or
three primary partitions and one extended
partition. In the extended partition, the user can
create logical drives

4. Primary Partition
O A primary partition is in which an Operating
System can be installed. One MBR hard disk
may contain a maximum of 4 primary
partitions. An active partition is based on
primary partition. Any one of the 4 primary
partitions can be set as active partition. Since
there can be 4 primary partitions with 4
different Operating Systems installed, one of
the partition that is marked active is used for
the initial booting. The active partition contains
the boot loader (such as ntldr or bootmgr) to
load operating systems from a disk.

5. Active Partition
O The active partition is the partition where
the boot flag is set. DOS and Windows
allow only one boot partition to be set with
the boot flag.

6. Extended Partition
O An HDD may contain only one extended
partition, but that extended partition can
be subdivided into multiple logical
partitions. DOS/Windows systems may
then assign a unique drive letter to each
logical partition.

7. Logical Drive
O Also called logical partition. A volume
created within an extended partition on a
basic disk. A logical drive can be
formatted and assigned a drive letter, but
cannot host an operating system.

8. What is Partition Table?
O Partition Table is a storage space which
records some information about primary,
extended and logical partitions. Further,
the create/delete/resize of any partition all
will modify the partition table to reflect the
changes permanently. If partition table is
crashed by virus or other stuffs, you
partition will lost, so the table is extremely
important.

9. MBR
O Master boot record is the information present in the
first sector of any hard disk. It contains the
information regarding how and where the
Operating system is located in the hard disk so that
it can be booted in the RAM.
O MBR is sometimes called master partition table
because it includes a partition table which locates
every partition in the hard disk.
O Master boot record (MBR) also includes a program
which reads the boot sector record of the partition
that contains operating system.

10. GPT
O (GUID Partition Table) The format used to define
the hard disk partitions in computers with UEFI
startup firmware. The GUID Partition Table (GPT)
replaces the previous master boot record (MBR)
method. While the MBR supported partitions as
large as 2.2TB, GPT partitions can be up to 18
exabytes. GPT supports a "protective" MBR so
that third-party MBR utilities can identify the disk
correctly, as well as a "legacy" MBR if the first
partition must boot as an MBR drive.

11. MBR Vs GPT