What is a logical drive? Sooner or later, all PC users face this issue. Many of them do not even pay attention to the fact that an expression so familiar to the hearing, in fact, is an incomprehensible phrase for them.
So, a logical drive is a certain, in advance, specific part of a hard drive (hard drive) used to store information. As a rule, in the system it is indicated by the letters of the Latin alphabet (B, C, D, E and so on).
It is worth noting that logical drives are not something physical that you can touch with your hands, like a hard drive, it is just a conditional logical unit that serves for user convenience and systematization of information on a PC. For example, having one physical medium, you can create several logical ones on it (for films, for working information, for games, system volume).
Partitioning a disk into several logical partitions has a number of undeniable advantages. Consider the most significant of them.
- Convenience of using information resources and disk space for different users of one physical device. In this case, you do not have to share your “place” with others by creating a logical drive and setting the appropriate access rights to it.
- Data security. Using special programs and utilities, it is possible to protect individual logical units from data changes, from the ability to write information or read. You can also establish the ability to carry out the above actions only after entering the user's personal password.
- Ability to install multiple operating systems. Having in your arsenal a couple of logical volumes, you can install various OS. Of course, for everything to work correctly, you must have a more or less powerful computer and put different operating systems on different disks. With proper installation, it will be possible to choose the OS that is located on a particular logical partition, simply by specifying the right place when loading the PC.
- Less data loss. If the logical disk is damaged, after its partition, only the information stored in this place is lost. However, the remaining volumes do not suffer. It is also worth mentioning that when reinstalling the OS, only the data that was in the system partition is erased, and the remaining volumes are not affected, that is, this technology allows you to save user files during the installation process.
- Defragment individual logical units. It allows you to carry out the defragmentation process much more efficiently and faster, which will not only speed up your PC, but also extend the life of the hard drive.
How to create a logical drive? Consider this process on the example of Windows 7, since this system is the most common today among ordinary users.
Step 1. Log in as an administrator.
Step 2. Open the Control Panel. Click on the System and Security group. Go to the Administration section.
Step 3. In the list, find and select Computer Management. Go to the Disk Management submenu of the Storage Devices section.
Step 4. Select the disk you want to split. Right-click on it and select Compress Volume.
Step 5. In the Size of the compressible field field, specify the size of the new disk space in megabytes and click the Compress button.
Step 6. Click on the appeared area with the name “Not allocated” and select the Create simple volume item that appears when you right-click. As a result, the Create Volume Wizard starts.
Step 7. Answer the wizard’s questions (what name should be assigned to the new disk, in which file system to format it) and enjoy all the advantages of the technology.
Such simple actions will lead to the separation of the hard drive and greatly simplify the "life" of the ordinary user.