There can be up to several tens of thousands of cylinders per disk. The
higher the write density on the disk, the more cylinders can be created on it
and the larger the capacity of the disk.
This design has a lot of technical implementation peculiarities, but we are not
discussing them here.
A.2
Hard Disk Partition
After low-level formatting creates disk sectors, partitions must be created on
it as well.
A
Partition
is an area on a hard disk that can be used to install an operating
system and/or used as data storage. Creating disk partitions is called
parti-
tioning
. Each disk partition does not depend on another. In particular, each
partition can contain its own operating system.
Different operating systems use
different data storage means — file systems
.
The process of creating a partition file system is called
formatting
. Each parti-
tion can have its own file system.
Preparing a disk for working includes two stages: partitioning and formatting.
Partitioning is useful and often necessary because:
1.
Different partitions can have different operating systems.
For example, Windows 2000, XP, and Linux.
2.
Partitioning provides more effective disk space usage.
3.
Partitioning enables you to separate system files from user data, mak-
ing personal information storage safer.
4.
Partitioning provides more effective hard disk maintenance. In particu-
lar, more effective data integrity control, file defragmentation, and data
backup.
A.3 Partition
Types
There are three main partition types:
•
Primary,
•
Extended,
•
Logical.
Primary and logical partitions are the main partition types. Physical hard disk can
contain
up to 4 primary
partitions or
up to 3 primary and infinite logical
.
68
Appendix A : Hard Disk And Operating System
