Three types of partitions are available: primary, extended, and logical. A hard drive can have three primary partitions and one extended partition. Each primary partition acts as a separate hard drive as far as the operating system is concerned. Inside the extended partition you can have up to 12 logical partitions — think of an extended partition as just a cardboard box that contains the logical
partitions. Logical partitions behave similar to primary partitions and hold data; extended partitions just hold logical partitions. Because I can't predict what software you want to install, I recommend having at least 10GB of space available in a partition for your Linux installation. More is always better because it gives you more room for downloads and even more programs. Make a note of the partition you dedicate to Windows and the one you dedicate to Linux. You need this information
when installing Linux. The example shows a single hard drive connected to the PC (assigned as drive letter C). File Explorer shows the drive is 899GB in size, and has 483GB available for use as a second partition. It's usually not a good idea to allocate all the free space on your hard drive to Linux; you'll want to leave some extra room in the Windows partition so you can continue doing things while you're running Windows, such as downloading and installing patches or saving new files. After you determine how much space you want to dedicate to Linux, you're ready to partition the hard drive.The Windows utility you want to use is the Disk Manager program. Follow these steps to use it:
During the shrink process Windows tries to move any data stored near the end of the partition towards the front to make room for the new partition. However, some system files can't be moved, which may cause a problem and produce an error message. If this happens there are ways to move those files, but it gets much more complicated that what I can cover here. Fortunately, you aren't the first person to need to do this, so there's plenty of help available. One place to consult is the Microsoft Windows forum at answers.microsoft.com and you'll see lots of postings on how to handle this situation. When the shrink process completes, a new partition appears in the Disk Manager listing. This new partition appears as Unassigned, and not have a drive letter assigned to it by Windows.If you have lots of space available on your existing Windows partition you'll probably want a lot more than 10GB of space. The 10GB is the minimum recommended for most Linux distributions to fit the operating system. However, if you download lots of multimedia, you’ll quickly eat up whatever was left after you installed your software! Give Linux as much space as you think you can spare from your Windows environment. How to partition a hard drive with Linux toolsIf you're in a situation where you don't currently have Windows installed on the hard drive but would like to partition the hard drive first, you can use Linux tools to do the work for you. The easy solution is to boot your PC using a Live distribution and use the disk management tools available. Plenty of Live distributions include disk management tools by default, but by far the most popular is the KNOPPIX Linux distribution.The KNOPPIX Linux distribution was the first to create a live Linux version, even back before there were DVDs (it was called a LiveCD!). What keeps KNOPPIX at the top of the list of popular Linux distributions is the myriad of utilities it includes by default. It touts itself as a rescue disk — a way to boot your PC if things go horribly wrong with the existing operating system, and be able to troubleshoot and possibly fix issues. Follow these steps to partition your hard drive using KNOPPIX:
About This ArticleThis article is from the book:
About the book author:Richard Blum has more than 30 years of experience as a systems administrator and programmer. He teaches online courses in PHP, JavaScript, HTML5, and CSS3 programming, and authored the latest edition of Linux For Dummies. This article can be found in the category:
What are the two main types of partitions used on Windows drives?There are different types of partitions with the main ones including:. Primary Partition: Contains one file system and typically stores the boot files for the primary operating system. ... . Extended Partition: A defined area where logical drives are stored.. What are the main two types of partitions?The two types of partitions are: Primary partition. Extended partition.
What are different types of partitions available for hard drive?You can divide your hard drive into multiple partitions. You can create separate system, recovery, Windows, or data partitions. To enhance the security of the Windows partition or a data partition, you can use BitLocker to encrypt the partition.
What are the two partitioning schemes that Windows 10 uses?You have to partition a disk drive before you can use it. MBR (Master Boot Record) and GPT (GUID Partition Table) are two different ways of storing the partitioning information on a drive.
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