At numerous forums on the Internet, a serious debate flashes up and down on how to properly partition a hard drive. During the existence of this issue, so many opinions have already been expressed that it is just right to write voluminous scientific work on them. However, it’s too early to put a point. Perhaps, in the “hard disk breakdown” issue, each user chooses a method that is most suitable for him, for a very specific range of tasks. This rule must be remembered constantly, even when reading the recommendations of the most respected authors.
Before exploring what a hard drive breakdown is, let's recall a little theory. Modern hard drives, depending on the principle of operation, are divided into two types - with magnetic plates and based on productive flash memory. In the first, an electric motor is placed inside the housing, on the spindle of which several discs with special spraying are fixed. Secondly, an array of memory cells is used. In order to be able to work with these devices, a software breakdown of the hard disk must first be done. Only after this operation, operating systems can “see” the connected hard drive, write and read data from it.
Surprisingly, the main difficulty lies not in choosing the program for the breakdown, but in deciding on the future structure. In the first case, the entire available volume can be allocated for a disk - for example, a 100 GB disk “C” will be created for a 100 GB hard drive. Another option - the same 100 GB can be divided into several logical drives. The choice of a solution depends on the user.
Imagine that a single-partition hard drive is an A3 format sheet . You can draw anything on it. But in order to navigate in a large number of drawings, they will have to be grouped somehow.
But the breakdown into several sections can be compared with the fact that the sheet A3 was cut into four A5 and fastened with brackets. The advantage is that each sheet can be used for a specific topic of drawings, but the search loses its clarity, and even when filling out a sheet, it becomes difficult to place new drawings on it.
So how to partition your hard drive ? Windows 7, for example, allows you to do this with built-in tools. The proposed utility has only a basic set of functions, so flexible configuration is out of the question, but it copes with the task quite successfully. On the “Computer” icon, click the right mouse button (RMB), follow the “Control” button. In the “Computer Management” column, select “Disk Management” and call properties (RMB). All possible commands for working with the volume will be displayed. The utility works extremely slowly, so you should be patient and have a cup of hot tea.
You can split a disk into Windows 7 partitions in a more convenient and faster way. To do this, you need to download a specialized program. Acronis Disc Director and Paragon's Partition Manager, which is almost similar in functionality, are especially popular now. Their main drawback is distribution for a fee. However, now for many users this is not an insoluble problem. The program can be installed and launched both in the operating system environment, which guarantees high compatibility, and through LiveCD-based solutions that include these programs. It should be noted that sometimes it may be necessary to change the operating modes of the "AHCI - IDE" hard drive in the BIOS of the motherboard. With the thoughtful use of the program features, you can perform almost any action on partitions without losing any information on the disk (although a backup is still preferable).