What is a partition?

In my last post (Switching to Linux Day 4), I said that I "partitioned" my hard drive.  What does that mean?

Think of your hard drive like a bookcase with adjustable shelves.  Let's say I insert a shelf toward the top of my bookcase.  I have just partitioned my bookcase.  I now have two sections in my bookcase... a smaller one (the top portion of the bookcase) and the larger bottom section.  Let's say I insert another shelf in the lower section.  I now have three sections of the bookcase, or three partitions. It is up to me to decide where to put the shelves in the bookcase, thus determining the space allowed for each section.  

It's the same with partitioning your hard drive.  Your hard drive is storage space, like a bookcase is storage space.  Partitioning your drive is nothing more than putting shelves in your bookcase.

How did I do it?

Let's review my computer specs:

• HP Pavilion a6742p-b
• 500 GB Hard Drive
• 6GB RAM
• Intel® Pentium® Dual-Core Processor E5300
• Intel Graphics Media Accelerator X3100 with 128MB dedicated memory, 287MB total available
• Vista Home Premium

So... my "bookcase" is a 500 GB hard drive.  

Vista makes partitoning a hard drive (putting shelves in your bookcase) fairly easy.

1. Log into an administrator account
2. click START > CONTROL PANEL
3. click on ADMINISTRATIVE TOOLS
4. click on COMPUTER MANAGEMENT
5. click on STORAGE in the left window
6. click on PARTION AND FORMATTING
7. select the drive you want to partition (my "bookcase" was drive C:)
8. RIGHT click and select SHRINK VOLUME
9. type in the size you want for your new (bookshelf) partition ( I typed 25GB)
10. once the "bookshelf" partition is created, you will see a new rectangle box, with a black bar over it, with the size partition you specified and the word "Unallocated",  click on that box; diagonal lines should appear in the box
11. RIGHT click on that box
12. select NEW SIMPLE VOLUME
13. type in the size of your partition once more (for me I typed 24998 MB); this will be the same number as the "MAXIMUM SIZE" also shown in this dialog box.
14. click NEXT
15. click the radio button next to "Format this volume with the following settings"
16. "FILE SYSTEM" should be set at NTFS
17. "ALLOCATION UNIT SIZE" should be "Default"
18. "VOLUME LABLE" is the name for this partition
19. leave the two check boxes blank
20. click NEXT
21. wait for the formatting to finish
22. you now have a partioned hard drive (a bookcase with a shelf).