What is Disk partitioning?
'''Disk partitioning''' is about making a physical or logical [[hard disk]] usable by the [[operating system]]. Each disk partition can be used like a [[hard disk]] by the [[operating system]]. A hard disk can be divided into many partitions. This is especially useful for: *Keeping the user data independent of the operating system. There will be one partition with the operating system on it, and one with the user data. Also if there is a problem with one file system, this does usually not affect the other file systems. *Some operating systems (those that are made like [[UNIX]] or [[Linux]]) use disk partitions for [[virtual memory]] *Using a [[boot loader]] it is possible to run many operating systems on the same computer. This is known as ''multi-booting''. *Increasing security: Certain operating systems allow to limit the access to a file system (for example: read-only, do not allow executable files, do not allow system files) [[Image:GParted 0.3.5 -- 2008, 06.png|center|300px|[[GParted]]]] Usually each partition contains exactly one [[file system]]. It depends on what you use, but for some simple examples: [[Microsoft Windows|Windows]] partitions will use [[File allocation table|FAT32]] ('''File Allocation Table'''), and for the main system partition use [[NTFS]] ('''New Technology File System'''). For [[MacOS]] systems, the primary system partition uses [[:en:Apple_File_System|APFS]] ('''Apple File System'''). For [[Linux]], the filesystems can vary, but on average you'd have a boot partition in FAT format, and either [[:en:Ext4|EXT4]] or [[Btrfs|BTRFS]] for the main system partition. [[Category:Hard drives]]