Partitioning Hard Drives in Windows XP
Remember that old Radio Shack TRS-80 computer that sat on your desk? One of the rituals that went with ownership was popping a tape into the cassette deck to load a program, all the while hoping the tape didn't get stretched or chewed up before the process completed. Later on hard drives made an appearance, but back in those early days a hard drive was a luxury, and a very expensive luxury at that when you start computing the cost per megabyte of early drives. Today, we rarely give much thought to the hard drive. In one way it's good they have become inexpensive and so reliable they seldom fail. On the other hand, because they are so reliable, we tend to ignore hard drives and overlook ways to make them more useful and efficient. A modified or advanced partitioning scheme isn't essential to the basic operation of a personal computer, but if you're a tweaker or organizational fanatic (I admit it, I am, on both counts) then partitioning affords a wealth of customization and organizational opportunities.
The Basic Hard Drive
What's a hard drive? There are tons of books and sites that delve into detailed descriptions, but basically it's a storage device. The medium that stores the actual data is called a platter, usually made from aluminum, and there are varying numbers of stacked platters depending on the capacity of the hard drive. The platters are placed inside a sealed case along with an actuator assembly for the heads and arms that move back and forth across the platters to write and retrieve the data. A hard drive is non-volatile storage. It requires no power supply to maintain the data that has been placed on the drive. In addition, the data is completely under user control. Data can be added and deleted at will and the drive can be configured in various ways to suit the purpose of the user.
Examining the Hard Disk Layout
The easiest way to understand the system drive structure is to use a tool supplied with Windows XP called Disk Management, a snap-in that's part of the Microsoft Management Console. The majority of systems sold today for home or small business use will come equipped with one hard drive, although many manufacturers offer special deals on new systems that make it financially attractive to add a second, third, or even fourth hard drive if you have a need for the extra capacity. In spite of the fact that a single hard drive can be configured in many different ways, it's a pretty safe bet that an off the shelf system will arrive in one of two basic configurations. Either the entire drive will be partitioned as C: as shown in Fig. 01 or it will be split into two partitions, one as C: that is visible and another partition that is hidden and contains an image of the operating system (and a ton of useless software) in case things go terribly wrong requiring a reinstall of the operating system.
