patitions

[tidytrev]

can anyone explain a partition to me? how is it done and what use is it?? ivheard you can have a second o/s on it like red hat or linux?

[Aaron]

Yeah you can create another partititon for another OS to reside on, it won't conflict with the data on your main partition (except for boot data). Partitions are also handy for storing your backups on (setup files to favourite applications etc) so you can format your OS partition without affecting your backup partition.

[Tinker]

A partition is like rooms in a house. A house may have 5 rooms but each room does not have the same items in it. If for example I were to clean the kitchen the front room would still be in need of a cleaning. It would be the same on a hard drive with partitions. I have a hard drive with 5 partitions each having its own data. Say I have Windows XP on the C:\ partition and Windows 2000 Pro on the D:\ partition. When I boot XP it will set up the computer with its own drivers and programs and will not use any of the data from Windows 2000 Pro to run the computer. Like wise when I boot with Windows 2000 Pro it will not use any of the XP data to run the computer.

Another good thing about using partitions is that you can set up one of the partitions to hold your programs and data instead of putting it on the partition with the O.S.. By doing this if you have a need to reinstall the O.S. and you format the drive you can only format the partition that you are going to fresh install the O.S. into and not bother the data on any of the other partitions.

I use NTFS on my hard drives and when I install XP it will me to partition and format the drive before it loads the O.S. There is some really good software out there that can partition and format a drive that is already in use. Some of the other folks can tell you about those..

I hope this helps..