1. Introduction

1.1. What is a partition?

Partitioning is a means to divide a single hard drive into many logical drives. A partition is a contiguous set of blocks on a drive that are treated as an independant disk. A partition table (the creation of which is the topic of this HOWTO) is an index that relates sections of the hard drive to partitions.

Why have multiple partitions?

1.2. Constraints

1.3. Other Partitioning Software:

1.4. Related HOWTOs

Table 1. Related HOWTOs

Title Author Description
Linux Multiple Disk System Tuning How to estimate the various size and speed requirements for different parts of the filesystem.
Linux Large Disk Instructions and considerations regarding disks with more than 1024 cylinders
Linux Quota Instructions on limiting disk space usage per user (quotas)
Partition-Rescue mini-HOWTO How to restore linux partitions after they have been deleted by a Windows install. Does not appear to preserve data.
Linux ADSM Backup Instructions on integrating Linux into an IBM ADSM backup environment.
Linux Backup with MSDOS Information about MS-DOS driven Linux backups.
Linux HOWTO Index Instructions on writing and submitting a HOWTO document

1.5. Additional information on your system: