New to technical side of Computers =D

[Logster1813]

Hello i've just gotten interested into the technical side of computers. Recently i've been looking over Hard Drives and partitionings. Im having trouble understanding partitions, the different types and uses. So if anyone would mind helping





(Plus if you'd like to talk about anything else i would be GLAD to)

 

[Laser]

Partitioning is a fairly simple concept. As long as you understand there is so much room on a hard drive, then its easy. We will use a giant cabinet for example. Say you have 2 things you want to put in your cabinet but you dont want the two seperated. So, you take a giant spacer, and your giant cabinet has become 2 smaller cabinets. Thats basically how partitioning works. The 2 sizes of the 2 partitions can only equal the total size of the whole hard drives.

Now there are many ways to go about partitioning your hard drive. You can use programs like Partition Magic that do it for you, you just decide what you want the two sizes to be and it will split them up for you. Now if you dont want to go out and waste money on a program like that when you probably already have a Windows XP CD. If you just select boot to CD-Rom in your bios, you can boot to the XP disc and start running setup, and you can create windows partitions using their own little program Microsoft bundles in there for you.

 

[ToxicBug]

partitioning is pretty much useless unless you want to install different OS'es on the same hard drive.

 

[Laser]

I like to partition so taht i can keep all my normal files out of my windows folder so that i can reformat whenever i please, which is quite often. heh

 

[ToxicBug]

holy poo, thats actually a really good idea.

 

[Logster1813]

Thank you that was a cool way you put it and i understand now.
However on my XP computer i bought from compaq they partitioned my 120 gb HD. Now I have 110MBs in one drive which is in NTFS and i have another one with 10 MBS formatted in FAT 32.

The FAT32 file system from what i understand holds all of the system files for the CD Recover and Application Restore. Now my question is why use two different file systems? I mean if NTFS has better security then why put critical files in the partition with FAT32?

 

[modemide]

Thank you that was a cool way you put it and i understand now.
However on my XP computer i bought from compaq they partitioned my 120 gb HD. Now I have 110MBs in one drive which is in NTFS and i have another one with 10 MBS formatted in FAT 32.

*I'll assume the MBs was meant to say GBs *


The FAT32 file system from what i understand holds all of the system files for the CD Recover and Application Restore. Now my question is why use two different file systems? I mean if NTFS has better security then why put critical files in the partition with FAT32?

NTFS is unreadable by their recovery cd because it it probably a dos based cd (for lack of a better word). Dos cannot read NTFS therefore they store an image (a duplicate set of files configurations etc... ) of how your system looked when they first sent it to you on a FAT32 partition. This enables you to use their recovery disk (which is loaded with a dos os) to do a clean wipe of your system so it's like brand new (when you first got it) rather than reformatting, and reinstalling xp.

There are ways to read NTFS but these methods are slightly more cumbersome. Some companies also use linux partitions so that only their cd and linux boot disk can read it. This is to prevent users from seeing it in windows

Hopefully that answers your question :nerd:

 

[Logster1813]

Yeah thanks you've all been a good help. One day at a time im learning just a little bit more all because of people like you guys =D.