What is partition?
To divide memory or mass storage into isolated sections. In DOS systems, you can partition a disk, and each partition will behave like a separate disk drive. Partitioning is particularly useful if you run more than one operating system. For example, you might reserve one partition for Windows and another for UNIX.
In addition, partitioning on DOS and Windows machines can improve disk efficiency. This is because the FAT system used by these operating systems automatically assigns cluster size based on the disk size: the larger the disk, the larger the cluster. Unfortunately, large clusters can result in a wasted disk space, called slack space. There is an entire sector of the software industry devoted to building utilities that let you partition your hard disk, such as Fdisk, Partition Magic and Super Fdisk.
Explanation: Use partition tools (such as Fdisk, Partition Magic, Super Fdisk ) to repartition hard drives is a common occurrence but care must be taken as if it is done incorrectly or problems on the hard disk exist, data will be lost.
Frequently when a repartition is attempted the program will not terminate correctly, crashing before it finishes. This can be due to corruption of the logical disk structure, physical problems (e.g. bad sectors on the hard disk), incorrect software installation etc. Such as Partition Magic in the wrong operation, unexpected termination in resizing partition or program crash due to power error or more problems of the hard disks (e.g. due to bad sectors etc.). Where previously the computer would boot and be usable, systems often refuse to start and may produce the following error messages: (these errors are frequently displayed on a black screen with white text)
- No boot device
- Operating System not found
- Primary Hard Disk not found. Press F1 to Continue
- Master Boot Record Not Found
- Invalid or corrupt FAT
- Invalid partition table entries
- Invalid sector
- Cannot find file or program
- Invalid command.com
- Primary/Secondary Hard disk failure
- Non system disk
- Disk error
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