What Is Disk Partitioning? Everything You Need to Know in 2022

A hard disk partition is defined as the storage space on a hard disk.

Most operating systems allow users to divide a hard drive into multiple partitions, effectively turning one physical drive into several smaller logical drives.

Reasons for Using Hard Disk Partitioning

To organize data more efficiently, users might choose to partition a hard disk into several sections. On a computer running Microsoft Windows, it is common to store the operating system and applications on one partition, and user data on another. That way, if something goes wrong with Windows, the operating-system partition can be reformatted and reinstalled without affecting the data partition.

Users might choose to partition a hard drive into multiple partitions because smaller partitions typically have a smaller cluster size. The cluster size is the smallest amount of data that a partition can store. A large partition might have a 16KB cluster size, which means a file containing only one character would take up 16KB of space on the disk. On a smaller partition, it might take only 4KB. This can be useful if you need to store many small files.

If the hard drive is larger than the maximum partition size supported by the operating system, the user may need to divide the large disk into multiple partitions.

Create a hard disk partition

Most operating systems use the fdisk command to create disk partitions. Many also have graphical tools that accomplish the same task, such as the partition manager.

Hard Disk Partitioning and File Systems

You don't actually store data on a partition itself.

You store file systems on your disk partitions, and data within those file systems.

Some operating systems blur the distinction between partitions and file systems.

Partition Table

Partition information is stored in the reserved area at the beginning of the hard disk, in the partition table.

Extended partition

An MBR can store information about only four partitions, which means that a hard disk can have no more than four primary partitions.

To overcome this limitation, extended partitions were created.

An extended partition contains information about other partitions. By using an extended partition, you can have more than four partitions on a hard disk.

These four primary partitions are often called simply “partitions.”

Partitions that are set up as extended partitions are usually referred to as logical partitions.

Partition Type

When a partition is created, a special byte is written to record its type.

Because a disk might be shared by multiple operating systems, there is a tendency for OSes to agree on the meanings of these values.

The following table lists some of the partition types in use.

Appendix: Recovering Lost Data from a Hard Disk Partition

You may also use the Data Recovery Wizard - Tools Data Recovery Wizard to recover data lost while managing partitions.

Note: To ensure a higher rate of data recovery success, do not install the Tools Data Recovery software on the disk where you lost your files.

Step 1. Launch the tools Data Recovery Wizard on your Windows 11, Windows 10, Windows 8, or Windows 7 PC. Select the disk partition or storage location where you lost data and click "Scan".

Step 2: The recovery software will start scanning the disk to find all lost and deleted files. Once done, click on “Filter” > “By Type” to specify the type of lost file.

Select the type of data to recover

Step 3. Preview and recover lost Windows files. You can double-click to preview the scanned files. Then, select the target data and hit the “Recover” button to save them to another secure location on your computer or an external storage device.