THOMAS RUSSELL, Information Technology Teacher

THOMAS RUSSELL, Information Technology Teacher

Historical/Conceptual After installing the hard drive it needs to be partitioned. Partitioning is the process of electronically subdividing the physical hard drive into smaller units called partitions.

Historical/Conceptual A hard drive must have at least one partition, and you can create multiple partitions on a single hard drive

With partitions you can organize a drive to suit your needs. You can store multiple OS systems; store one OS in one partition and create additional partitions for another OS.

Master Boot Record The first sector of an MBR hard drive contains the master boot record (MBR). When your system boots, BIOS looks at the first sector of the HD for instructions. Without this code, the OS will not load.

The master boot record also contains the partition table, which describes the number and size of partitions on the disk

After the MBR locates the appropriate partition, the partition boot sector loads the OS on that partition. The partition boot sector stores information important to its partition, such as the location of the OS boot files.

OS boot files

Primary partitions and multiple Operating Systems. Primary partitions are assigned drive letters. The first primary partition ins Windows is always C: After that, they go from D to Z

Only one partition can be active at a time because you can run only one OS at a time.

Grand Unified Bootloader (GRUB) is a free Linux-based boot manager.

An Extended partition overcomes the four partition limit. It can contain multiple logical drives.

Dynamic Disk Dynamic disk calls a drive structure created with a dynamic disk a volume. With a dynamic disk, you can create as many volumes as you want you are not limited to four partitions.

When you turn a hard drive into a dynamic disk, you create as many volumes as you want. You can use software to create new drive structures that you can t do with MBR drives.

You can Implement RAID, span volumes over multiple drives, and extend volumes on one or more drives.

GUID Partition table The globally unique identifier partition table (GPT) has 3 improvements over MBR; It can have an almost unlimited number of partitions It has no restrictions on the size of the partitions

GPT Looks much like MBA but they are arranged by LBA instead of sectors. The partitions on a GPT drive go between the primary and back-up headers and arrays.

When to partition? When you install an OS to a new system When you add an additional drive to an existing system system

For years we used a program called FDISK to partition drives

Now we use a graphical program called Disk Management, found under Computer Management in Administrative Tools.

Partition Naming Problems When you create a new partition or volume in current versions of Windows, the Disk Management Tool only shows you re about to create a volume.

Partition Naming Problems Though the content menu says volumes you create partition on basic disk

Hard Drive Formatting Formatting does two things: It creates a file system (like a library catalog) And it makes the root directory

File Systems in Windows Windows use supports four separate Microsoft file systems FAT16 FAT32 NTFS And exfat/fat64

FAT MS-DOS version 2.1 supported hard drives using a data structure and indexing system to keep track of stored data on a hard drive and Microsoft called this structure the file allocation table.

The official term for a FAT is data structure, but it s like a two column spreadsheet. The left column gives each sector a hexadecimal number from 0000 to FFFF. Each hex character represents four bits. The right column contains information on the status of the sectors

Clustering enabled us to format partitions larger than 32 MB.

Clustering refers to combining a set of contiguous sectors and treating them as a single unit in FAT. These units are called file allocation units or clusters.

The number of sectors per cluster for FAT16

Example: You want to save a file mom.txt. Before saving the file. The FAT looks like this:

Windows finds the first open cluster and fills it. But the whole file wont fit into that cluster.

Needing more space, the OS goes through the FAT to find the nest open cluster, 3ABC. Before filling 3 ABC, the value of 3ABC is placed in 3ABB s status

Even after filling two clusters, the file still need more room so Windows must find another cluster. The 3ABD cluster has been marked FFF7 (bad cluster), so Windows skips it over it to find 3ABE.

Before filling 3ABE, Windows enters the value 3ABE in 3ABC status. Windows does not completely fill 3ABE, signifying that the entire mom.txt file has been stored. Windows enters FFFF in 3ABE s status, indicating the end of the file.

After saving all the clusters, Windows locates the file s folder and records the file name, size, date/ time and starting cluster, like this; mom.txt 19234 05-19-09 2:04p 3ABB

Fragmentation Lets save two more files: Irsrob.doc Ibmhelp.doc

Fragmentation The irsrob.doc takes the next three clusters 3ABF, 3AC0 and 3AC1 and ibmhelp.com takes two clusters 3AC2 and 3AC3

If you erase mom.txt, Windows does not delete it. It marks it with the Greek sigma Letter. But data remains until space is needed.

You can use software to change the Greek letter back to normal and retrieve the deleted data.

Save on more file, taxrec.xls. This a a spreadsheet that will take sic clusters. It will reside in the same folder as mom.txt. Windows write to the drive, overwrites Mom.txt and still needs three clusters. The next clusters, 3AC4, 3AC5 and 3AC6 Page 361

Disk Defragmenter and Optimize Drives re-arrange the files into neat contiguous chunks.

FAT32 had 2 improvements It supports partitions up to 32TB It uses 32 bits to describe each cluster

NTFS New Technology File System. NTFS uses clusters and file allocation tables in a much more complex and powerful way compared to FAT and FAT32

NTFS utilizes an enhanced file allocation table called the master file table (MFT).

Security Improvements with NTFS Compression Encryption Disk Quotas Cluster Sizes

Shows configured quotas for a hard drive

If you want to format large USB flash drives with NTFS Windows allow you to do so.

exfat or FAT64 breaks the 4GB file size barrier of FAT32

Windows is straight-forward when going through the installation process.

You ll go through a few installation screens but You will eventually get to the Where do you want to install Windows? dialog box

Typical Windows 7 Disk Management

When you click OK, Windows will create the 100-MB System Reserve Partition as well as the partition you specified.

Disk Management Utility is the primary tool for partitioning and formatting drives after installation.

When you install an extra hard drive, Disk Management notices the new drive and starts the Hard Drive Installation Wizard. If you don t let the Wizard run, the drive will be listed as unknown.

Creating Partitions and Volumes in Disk Management. Right-click on the unallocated part of the drive and select New Simple Volume. Disk Management runs the New Simple Volume Wizard. You ll go straight to the sizing screen.

Specify a volume size and click Next. The wizard will ask if you want to assign a drive letter to the volume, mount it as a folder to an existing volume or do neither.

The last screen ask you for the type of format you want to use for this partition

To compress a file or folder, choose the one you want to compress, right-click and select Properties, Then Click the Advanced button and turn compression on.

Dynamic Disk once you convert a drive from a basic disk to a dynamic disk, primary and extended partition no longer exist.

To convert a basis disk to dynamic, just right-click the drive icon and select Convert to Dynamic Disk.

In Disk Management, right click any unallocated space can chose New Simple Volume.

You ll see a series of screens that prompt you on size and file system than then you are finished.

To extend of span, right-click the volume you want to make bigger and choose Extend Volume form the options.

This opens the Extend Volume Wizard and prompts you for the location of free space on a dynamic disk and the increased volume size you want to assign.

Two Way Mirror With the simple two-way mirror space, you can add speed a and resiliency. For every 10 GB of data to be stored, 20 GB of storage must be installed.

Error checking Errors happen! Tools used to find errors are called error checking utilities. Older Microsoft tools for this are ScanDisk and chkdisk. Current version of Windows uses the tool Error-checking. Mac uses Disk Utility

Properties Dialog Box

Check Disk Dialog Box

Disk and Repair Disk

Optimize drive with Defragment

Disk Cleanup Files in the recycle bin Temporary Internet files Downloaded program files Temporary files

Formatting Formatting is a slow process, your drive makes noise and you end up seeing errors like the one below.

Data Corruption Power surges accidental shutdowns, corrupted installation media and viruses can cause corruption and it shows up while Windows is running, like this:

Data Corruption SpinRite is a free utility that marks bad sectors accurately and does not disturb the data, enabling you to run it without fear of losing anything.

Third-Party Tools Great third party tools are available to give you more flexibility.

More Tools GParted is a powerful partition editor and it s free!

Implementing Hard Drives The End