Partitioning involves dividing a physical disk drive into logical sections called partitions. This allows an operating system like Windows to install files onto a designated partition. There are three types of partitions: primary, extended, and logical drives. Common file systems include FAT32, NTFS, and exFAT. NTFS supports larger file sizes, quotas, and encryption while FAT32 is better for compatibility and smaller file sizes. The allocation unit size determines the minimum space a file occupies on the disk.

1. PARTITIONING; NTFS,
FAT32, ALLOCATION UNIT
SIZE

2. PARTITIONING
• A disk partition or partition is a section of the hard drive that is
separated from other segments. Partitions enable users to
divide a physical disk into logical sections.
• This partition serves to define an area of the hard drive that
Windows can use to install all of its files.
• The partitioning of a hard drive occurs after the drive has been
physically formatted but before it is logically formatted.

3. TYPES OF PARTITION
• There are three types of partition:
• Primary Partitions
• Extended Partitions
• Logical Drives
• Here is an example of where the disk contains one primary
partition and one extended partition made up of three logical
drives:

4. OPERATING SYSTEMS WITH ASSOCIATED
FILE SYSTEM
Operating system Associated file system
DOS FAT16
Windows XP NTFS
Windows 98 FAT32
Windows 95 FAT16-FAT32
Windows NT NTFS
OS/2 HPFS
Linux Linux Ex2, Linux Ex3

5. FAT32 FILE SYSTEM
• Updated version of FAT file system
• FAT32 uses space more efficiently
• The FAT32 file system allows for a default cluster size as small
as 4 KB, and includes support for EIDE hard disk sizes larger
than 2 gigabytes (GB).
• FAT32 supports drives up to 2 terabytes in size.
• FAT32 is more flexible. The root folder on a FAT32 drive is an
ordinary cluster chain, so it can be located anywhere on the
drive

6. NEW TECHNOLOGY FILE SYSTEM (NTFS):
• NTFS is the modern file system which is currently used by Windows
for its system drive and, by default, for most non-removable drives.
• NTFS is the primary file system used in Microsoft's Windows 10,
Windows 8, Windows 7, Windows Vista, Windows XP, Windows 2000,
and Windows NT operating systems
• NTFS supports disk usage quotas. Disk usage quotas are set by an
administrator to restrict the amount of disk space that a user can
take up.
• Encrypting File System is another feature supported by NTFS
• Transactional NTFS allows software developers to build applications
that either completely succeed or completely fail.

8. NTFS VS FAT32
NTFS
• NTFS is capable to store almost
all types of files with a high
range of file size limits. In other
words, it is capable to store all
types of files available at
present.
• Designed to support 1.6EB but
in real supports 256 TB
FAT32
• FAT32 is a great aid to store the
files into the removable or
external storage device or
drives.
• it is used to store only the small
files not the apps or files having
a large size upto 8 TB.

9. NTFS
Pros:
•There is an inexhaustible limit of files
to be stored using NTFS. You can
store a file of any partition size.
•It is mainly used to store files in
internal hard drives.
•It is used for the installation of
software as well.
FAT32
Pros:
•It is an amazing file system to
store files in flash drives.
•It is lightweight and has
cross-platform compatibility.

10. NTFS
Cons:
•It is compatible with limited
cross-platform.
•You can not edit the NTFS
formatted file using Mac.
FAT32
Cons:
•You can only store files
having a size-limited up to 4
GB and partition size up to 8
TB.

11. ALLOCATION UNIT SIZE
• Allocation Unit Size is also known as “Cluster size”. The cluster
size here means the very small chunk of the space of the disk
which holds or which is capable of holding a file.
• If you have lots of small files, then it’s a good idea to keep the
allocation size small so your harddrive space won’t be wasted.
• If you have lots of large files, keeping it higher will increase the
system performance by having less blocks to seek.