What does it mean to partition a hard drive?

Partition

(computer science) the part of a hard disk that is dedicated to a particular operating system or application and accessed as a single unit

Separation of a hdd into different "slots" if you will so that there appears to be more than one... Basically dividing the hard drive up... some do it so certain programs and applications will not clash...

It means if you can split (partition) your hard drive into smaller pieces.

For example, you have a 500GB hard drive with 1 partition and windows will show that you have a

C:\ drive that is ~500GB.

Now suppose you want to create TWO partitions of EQUAL size. Windows will show that you have a

c:\ drive that is ~250GB and a

d:\ drive that is ~250GB

because 250 + 250 = the original 500GB hard drive.

You can actually create more than 2 partitions if you like ( i forget the maximum for a hard drive) and you can also assign them different sizes. I'm only giving examples.

Like suppose you create THREE partitions with your 500GB hard drive. You can split it up as follows:

C:\ 100GB to store windows and some other files

D:\ 100GB to store your music

E:\ 300GB to store your movies.

because 100 + 100 + 300 = 500GB again.

Get the idea? It's just a nice way to organize things and defrags/chdsk/anti-virus all run faster this way.

Just means to divide the drive up into smaller drives. After partitioning instead of one 2gb hard drive your computer now sees 2, 1gb hard drives. Partitioning serves little purpose unless you have a huge hard drive, and can lead to problems some day. I once divided mine up like that, and as it filled up I of course could not divide applications between two separate drives. I had to erase everything, undo the partition and reinstall everything.

It is a way to create 2 "virtual" drives on a single physical hard drive. For instance, you could have a "C:" drive and a "D:" drive, but they would both be phsically located on different partitions (locations) on one physical hard drive. One advantage to doing this can be to keep your documents separated from your operating system and applications, so that you can run backups or make copies of the partition where you are keeping your documents to back up your data.

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