Disk partitioning

Disk partitioning is the act of dividing a hard disk drive into multiple logical storage units referred to as partitions, to treat one physical disk drive as if it were multiple disks. Partitions are also termed "slices" for operating systems based on BSD, Solaris or GNU Hurd. A partition editor software program can be used to create, resize, delete, and manipulate these partitions on the hard disk.

Creating more than one partition has the following advantages :

Separation of the operating system (OS) and program files from user files. This allows image backups (or clones) to be made of only the operating system and installed software.

Having an area for operating system virtual memory swapping/paging.

Keeping frequently used programs and data near each other.

Having cache and log files separate from other files. These can change size dynamically and rapidly, potentially making a file system full.

Use of multi-boot setups, which allow users to have more than one operating system on a single computer. For example, one could install Linux, BSD, Mac OS X, Microsoft Windows or other operating systems on different partitions of the same hard disk and have a choice of booting into any compatible operating system at power-up.

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