PC Hacks

Hack #40. Partition and Format Wisely

Do you know how much of your hard disk space you're wasting? If you are using Windows 95, 98, 98SE, or ME (even 2000 or XP without NTFS), you could be wasting at least 10% and possibly up to 30% of your hard drive space due to suboptimal allocation unit sizes.

Disk partitions are logical regions of a disk drive containing a filesystem. Partitioning a hard disk is like subdividing parcels of land and dictating how those parcels will be further subdivided into lots or common areas. Partitioning establishes how big the parcel of land to be used will be. The filesystem within a partition contains files and directories that are organized in what we see as a hierarchical tree structure.

We use the filesystem and the tools and support for it within an operating system to put things into and take them out of the "parcels" (called clusters ) of space allocated in the partition. If we put a small house in a large parcel (cluster) we have a lot of empty space. In terms of land, we could landscape or farm that space, but in terms of filesystems, we get only one "house" per cluster. One house may occupy many clusters, but nothing else can use that cluster, even if there is empty space within it.

The Different Partition Types

The different operating systems available for PCs provide support for various partition types and filesystems. There are five types of partitions you will encounter on x86 machines:

Primary

A primary partition is the first and often the ...