Reference Guide - Hard Disk Drives  A Brief History of the Hard Disk Drive Construction and Operation of the Hard Disk Drive Hard Disk Geometry and Low-Level Data Structures Hard Disk Performance, Quality and Reliability Hard Disk BIOS and Capacity Factors Hard Disk Interfaces and Configuration Hard Disk Logical Structures and File Systems Operating Systems and File Systems PC File Systems Major Disk Structures and the Boot Process FAT File System Disk Volume Structures Clusters and File Allocation Partitioning, Partition Sizes and Drive Lettering FAT Sizes: FAT12, FAT16 and FAT32 FAT Partition Efficiency: Slack Relationship of Partition Size and Cluster Size FAT32 Performance Tradeoff: FAT32 Cluster Sizes and FAT Sizes Using Partitioning with Hard Disks Over 2 GB Using Partitioning to Reduce Slack Partition Size Tradeoff: Slack Waste and "End of Volume" Space Waste Do More Partitions Keep the Disk "Organized"? Special-Purpose Partitions and Other Partitioning Issues Drive Letter Assignment and Choosing Primary vs. Logical Partitions Disk Partitioning and Formatting Programs Disk Compression Author: Charles M. Kozierok  There is one aspect to partitioning that is pretty clear-cut: if you have a hard disk that is over 2 GB in size, and you are not using FAT32, you must divide the disk into partitions such that each is no larger than 2 GB, in order to access the entire disk. If you do not, you will not be able to access more than the first 2 GB on the disk. (You will in most cases want to use partitions smaller than 2 GB in size anyway, to reduce slack). Next: Using Partitioning to Reduce Slack

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