Talk:Disk partitioning

Hi, I returned the materials moved to Hard disk drive partitioning history, because they don't make up for a whole article. Let me explain: each article in Wikipedia has to reach a balance of size versus integration of details. Now the history of hard drive partitioning is quite integral to the concept of drive partitioning, and it doesn't excessively increase the size. So in this case it's best to leave it in one chunk. Remember, Wikipedia is an encyclopedia with proper articles, not Everything2 with nodes :-) --Uriyan

In fact, the history of partitioning is just about the only thing on the topic. The whole concept of partitioning is completely obsolete. Partitioning (and formatting) make no sense in the case of a Logging FS where you can grow and shrink the log dynamically. -- Ark

POV, surely -- partitioning is still critically relevant to the vast majority of filesystems. Wikipedia doesn't enjoy the luxury of closing its eyes and pretending that it doesn't exist. --Jkew 19:46, 22 November 2005 (UTC)

To do: Drive partitioning on non- IBM PC architectures was moved from the article to here. --cprompt 02:23, 21 Dec 2003 (UTC)

I merged the following articles Active partition, Partition (Computing), Partition (IBM PC) - Jacob 16 Jun 2005

Someone else (not me) wrote: This is too d*** confusing... wikipedia should take care of it and write something better... this explanation suckz hard... i think you'd better erase it... it is surelly better than let people read this bunch of bulls***... 68.64.175.222 22:44, 26 January 2006 (UTC)

1024 sector limitation

The article says:

"Technical limitations of a filesystem or operating system (e.g. old versions of the Microsoft FAT filesystem or old Linux kernels that can't boot on a partition with more than 1024 sectors)"

Is this a reference to the old limitation in LILO that meant it could not boot from a partition that began after the 1024th cylinder on a drive? If so, the statement above needs to be corrected. — Yama 10:00, 15 September 2005 (UTC)

XOSL link

I have removed the dead link to xosl.org (which now belongs to a link farm):

• operating system loader

Although Ranish has a mirror of it, I'm not really sure how relevant an operating system loader is to an article on partitioning -- all the other links are to either further information on partitioning or to partitioning utilities, not to loaders. --Jkew 19:30, 22 November 2005 (UTC)

Extended/logical partitions

24 logical partitions in an extended partition? Since when? Assume this is a typo for 4. Should also note that extended partitions can be nested. --Jkew 19:40, 22 November 2005 (UTC)

I think this refers to the limit existing since DOS 3.3 (1987) to have a maximum of 23 logical partitions inside an extended partition (using a chained setup where each partition is preceded by an "EMBR" with only two entries, one being the logical, and the other being another extended which points to the next slice.)
The limit of 23 was computed as being 26 (letters) -2 (A: and B: were for floppies) -1 (for C: which had to be primary). --AntoineL 15:16Z, December 5th, 2005

Hardlink attacks

Would be useful to provide a link to this for those (like me) who had their interest piqued -- can't find anything suitable within Wikipedia. --Jkew 19:49, 22 November 2005 (UTC)

Google. ;^ ] 68.64.175.222 22:45, 26 January 2006 (UTC)

Other partitioning implementations

Concurrent schemes used

There are a number of them; GNU Parted or Linux fdisk support a few like the Unix-inherited (BSD, Sun, etc.) disklabels or the Apple Macintosh scheme; there is also the SCO Xenix divvy scheme which may be historically relevant.--AntoineL 15:51Z, December 5th, 2005

Intel GUID Partition Table

A recent edit (Nov 30th) added

Its however unlikely this project will ever replace IBM PC partitions as the Itanium processor was not received well by the market.

While factually correct about Itanic, I do not agree with the conclusion. For the PC architecture, GPT is still the only scheme with some acceptance which saves the 2TB barrier (32-bit count of 512-byte sectors). It is implemented in Linux, BSD, and the recent versions of Windows.
I am not to say GPT will be the solution (would be a POV.) Booting is certainly still a problem to solve, and the BIOS makers are expected here; also AMD does not seem willingful to acceptance the EFI standard as a whole (but GPT can easilly be severed.)--AntoineL 15:51Z, December 5th, 2005

Too technical

In reading this article, I have come across quite a few terms that would definitely not be readily identifiable to many people who use PCs. Jargon terms are used rather than simple English- defining/wikifying the terms would be a good idea. On the whole, the article is well written from a basic techie viewpoint, but that moves it away from being generally useful to a broad base of Wikipedia readers.

→ P.MacUidhir (t) (c) 05:34, 26 February 2006 (UTC)

windows partition setup??

talking about windows partitions... should the programs and files (eg my docs) be stored together on a 2nd partition, or both separately on a 2nd and 3rd?? - mar 1st