The Ultimate Guide to Hard Drive Partitioning
Disk partitioning divides the data storage space of a hard disk into
separate areas referred to as 'partitions'. Partitions are usually
created when the hard disk is first being prepared for usage. Once a
disk is divided into partitions, directories and files may be stored on
them. Because of later changes on the computer and operating system,
often an administrator or power user will be faced with the need to
resize partitions, create new partitions in the unallocated space, and
sometimes even undelete partitions that were previously removed or
deleted.
Hard disk partitioning tools will allow you to create additional
partitions from existing ones by resizing the existing partitions and
creating empty, un-used space on which you can create new partitions.
The most important aspect of such tools is their ability to do this
without losing your data that is currently on your existing partitions.
Such tools allow you to create and format these new partitions.
Hard Drive Partitioning: Use Caution!
Most tools will let you convert a partition from one file type to
another, i.e. from NTFS to FAT/FAT32 or vice versa. Needless to say that
in most cases, such a conversion, especially from NTFS to FAT/FAT32
will cause the files to lose their NTFS permissions (ACLs), and in some
cases where EFS was used to encrypt the files, it will actually cause
you to lose access to these files. So beware!
Some of these tools may be able to help you recover deleted
partitions, and if data on that disk was un-damaged, actually help you
gain access to that data. Some, but not all of the tools may have the
ability to move existing partitions from one location on the disk to
another location, again, without losing data.
