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| The process of electronically subdividing the physical hard drive into smaller units (partitions). |
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| The process of installing a file system onto the drive that organizes each partition in such a way that the operating system can store files and folders on the drive. |
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| A hard drive that uses either the master boot record (MBR) partitioning scheme or the GUID partition table (GPT)partitioning scheme. |
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| A hard drive that uses the dynamic storage partitioning scheme. |
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| The first sector of an MBR hard drive. It contained information that tells the OS how to boot. It also contains the partition table. |
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| It describes the number and size of partitions on the disk. The instructions in the master boot record use this to determine which partition contains the active operating system. |
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| It loads the OS on the partition after the MBR locates the appropriate partition. It stores information important to its partition, such as the location of the OS boot files. |
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| Designed to support bootable operating systems. |
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| Partitions that are not bootable. They overcome the limit of four partitions because they can contain multiple logical drives. They do not contain drive letters. |
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| It is contained in the extended partition but works like a primary partition because it usually gets a drive letter but it can't boot an OS. |
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| Dynamic Storage Partitioning/Dynamic Disks |
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Definition
| This type of partitioning allows you to create as many volumes on a hard drive as you want and you can create-in software-new drive structures. Specifically, you can implement RAID, span volumes over multiple drives, and extend volumes on one or more drives. |
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| A drive structure created with dynamic disk. It is technically a partition, but it can do things a regular partition cannot do. |
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These volumes work a lot like primary partitions. For example, If you have a hard drive and you want to make half of it E: and the other half F:, you create two volumes on a dynamic disk.
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| These volumes use unallocated space on multiple drives to create a single volume. If any of these drives fails, you lose all of your data. |
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| These volumes are RAID 0 volumes. You can take any two unallocated spaces on two separate hard drives and stripe them. If either drive fails, you lose all of your data. |
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| These volumes are RAID 1 volumes. You can take any two unallocated spaces on two separate hard drives and mirror them. If one of the two mirrored drives fail, the other keeps running. |
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| These volumes are for RAID 5 arrays. This volume requires three or more dynamic disks with equal-sized unallocated spaces. |
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| Globally Unique Identifier Partition Table (GPT) |
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| This partitioning improved MBR. A drive with this partitioning can have an almost unlimited number of primary partitions (Microsoft limited Windows to 128 partitions), has a maximum size limit so large its measured in zettabytes (a million terabytes), and it supports logical block addressing (LBA). |
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| This partition is really just a primary partition that is hidden from your operating system. Only special BIOS tools may access it. |
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| A type of partition that is found only on Linux and BSD systems. This partitions only job is to act like RAM when your system needs more RAM than you have installed. |
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| This is in the file system that formatting creates and it provides the foundation upon which the OS builds files and folders. |
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| File Allocation Table (FAT) |
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Definition
| This type of file system keeps track of which sectores store the various parts of a file. It's like a two-column spreadsheet. The left column gives each sector a hexadecimal number from 0000 to FFFF. The right column contains information on the status of sectors. |
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| One of the functions of this is the mapping of bad sectors. The special status code FFF7 was placed in the sector's FAT location for bad sectors and 0000 was for good sectors. |
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| It is the combining of a set of contiguous sectors and treating them as a single unit in the FAT. It was created to inprove FAT16 by enabling you to format partitions larger than 32 MB. |
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| The last cluster used to save a file gets the code FFFF put into the clusters status area in the FAT. |
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| A file format that supports partitions up to 2 GB, uses 16 bits to describe each cluster (4 hexadecimal characters), had cluster sizes up to 32 KB, and needs defragmentation. |
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| A file format that supports partitions up to 2 TB, uses 32 bits to describe each cluster, has more reasonable cluster sizes (4 KB - 32 KB), and needs defragmentation. |
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| New Technology File System (NTFS) |
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Definition
| A file format that uses clusters and file allocation tables but in a much more complex and powerful way compared to FAT or FAT32. It offers six major improvements and refinements: redundancy, security, compression, encryption, disk quotas, and cluster sizing. |
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| An enhanced file allocation table used in NTFS. NTFS keeps a backup copy of the most critical parts of this in the middle of the disk, reducing the chance that a serious drive error can wipe out both it and the copy. |
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| Access Control List (ACL) |
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| A feature used in NTFS that provides security for individual files and folders. |
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| Encrypting File System (EFS) |
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| An encryption utility in NTFS that allows you to encrypt a single file, a folder, or a folder full of files. |
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| The enabling of administrators to set limits on drive space usage for users, which is supported by NTFS. |
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| A file system breaks the 4 GB file-size barrier on USB thumb drives using FAT32. It supports files up to 16 exabytes (EB) and a theoretical partition limit of 64 zettabytes (ZB). It also has 64-bit cluster entries in the file table. |
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| Any removable media that has a bootable OS. |
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| A process that places special information onto the drive. The information includes identifiers that say "this drive belongs in this system" and other information that defines what this hard drive does in the system. |
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| A drive status you see when you move a dynamic disk from one computer to another. |
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| When a striped volume spreads out blocks of each file across multiple disks, the group of two or more drives is called? |
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| This is when partitions and volumes are mounted as a folder on another drive. This enables you to use your existing folders to store more data than can fit on a single drive or partition/volume. It only applies to Windows XP and Vista. |
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