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Glossary
of Partitioning and Booting |
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AutoSave and Backups / Software
Development |
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Active
- BackStep Wizard™ - Boot
- Bootable - Clusters
- Conversion - Copy Partition
- Create Partition - Cylinder
- Delete Partition - Drive
- Extended - FAT - FAT
Conversion - Format - Free
Space - ID - Head - Hide
Partition - HPFS - Logical
Partition - Master Boot Record - Move
Partition - MultiFAT - NTFS
- Optimize - OS Wizard™
- Partition - Partition
Wizard™ - Primary - Reboot
- Resize - Restart -
Sector - Surface scan
- System Commander - TrueDOS™
- Unallocated space - Undo
- Unhide - Used space -
Unused space - Validate |
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Active
- To run your OS from a specific partition, it must be marked 'Active'.
If you are using System Commander, this is handled for you automatically.
Some users also refer to the active partition as 'bootable'. |
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BackStep
Wizard™ - This is a Multi-Level advanced undo. See Undo. |
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Boot
- To boot is the action when you first turn on power or press the
reset button to begin anew. |
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Bootable
- See 'Active'. |
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Clusters
- Windows and DOS use a way of storing data on the disk in small groups
called clusters. This allows faster access to the data, but may waste
some space. For example, a 2 GB FAT partition will use a 32 KB cluster
size, meaning a file will always take some multiple of 32 KB bytes
of disk space. |
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Conversion
- This is the operation of converting a partition between different
file systems. For example, a Windows 98/Me system supports both FAT
and FAT32 file systems. You can convert a FAT partition to FAT32 or
FAT32 back to FAT. See FAT for more about each type of file system. |
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Copy
Partition - A copy operation transfers data from one partition
to another area. The original data is left in place. |
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Create
Partition - A new partition is created in an area of free space.
In addition, for FAT, FAT32, NTFS and Linux file systems, the partition
is formatted to make it ready for data or OS installation. |
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Cylinder
- This relates to the hard drive's data layout of cylinders, heads
and sectors. With these three values, a specific sector of data can
be located. |
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Delete
Partition - Remove a partition. The data within the partition
will no longer be accessible. |
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Drive
- We generally use this term for hard drives. Other drive types, such
as CDROMs and diskette drives will be explicitly referenced. Your
system may have one hard drive or more. The first drive is considered
Drive 0, the next drive is Drive 1, and so forth. |
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Extended
- This is a special partition type that holds any number of logical
drives. Only four primary partitions can exist on a single drive.
By using one primary partition as extended, the extended partition
can hold many logical partitions. (Which leaves 3 remaining primaries
for different OSes). |
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FAT
- This is the file system for a partition. It stands for File Allocation
Table. Other file system types include NTFS and various Unix formats.
There are three
FAT sub-types - FAT12, FAT16 and FAT32. We refer to FAT12 and FAT16
as simply FAT, since you do not have a choice of which type is used
(it depended on the partition size). FAT32 can be used for partitions
above 128 MB. FAT32 also allows very large partitions, above 2 GB
in size, the limitation of FAT16. FAT32 also allows a smaller cluster
size, so it can save considerable space.
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FAT
Conversion - See 'Conversion'. |
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Format
- Defines the system data structures in a partition, so it is ready
to be used. A format on top of partition that already exists will
remove all of the existing data in the partition, making it empty.
Normally a surface scan is performed as part of the format operation
to look for and remove any defective areas of the disk. |
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Free
Space - This is space on a drive that has not been allocated to
any partition. It is also commonly referred to as unallocated space. |
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ID
- Each partition has a file system ID to specify the file system type
on a partition. Different ID types include FAT, FAT32, NTFS, SCO,
Linux, and many others. An OS looks at these types and ignores any
that it does not understand, and assigns a drive letter to those that
it does understand. |
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Head
- See 'Cylinder'. |
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Hide
Partition - This makes a partition temporarily disappear. A hidden
partition's data is still on the hard drive, but no OS can see the
data. This feature is useful when you have more than one OS on a PC,
and as each OS is selected, the other OS's partition is hidden. System
Commander handles hiding and unhiding automatically for you. |
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HPFS
- This is an alternative file system used by OS/2 and Windows NT.
It stands for "High Performance File System". |
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Logical
Partition - A logical partition resides in an extended partition.
While important in understanding partitions, those OSes that support
logicals do not make a distinction between primary and logical partitions.
Only Windows, DOS, OS/2, NT, and Linux understand logical partitions.
All other OSes ignore logical partitions. |
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Master
Boot Record (MBR) - This is the very first section of data on
the hard drive. It holds the start up program and information about
each primary or extended partition on that drive. It also has a flag
to indicate if a partition is active/bootable. |
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Move
Partition - Move the partition and the data within it upward or
downward into adjacent free space. |
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MultiFAT
- This is the partition that may hold more one or more OSes when System
Commander Deluxe or System Commander 2000 is installed. It is also
the partition where this program resides. |
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NTFS
- This is an alternative file system used by Windows NT/2000/XP. It
stands for "New Technology File System". |
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Optimize
- This is the operation that looks for the best way to adjust a partition
for the most available space. It does this by looking at all the files
on the partition, and seeing which cluster size and file system has
the least waste. |
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OS
Wizard™ - This feature of System Commander automatically prepares
a system for a new OS. It will perform resize, create and other operations
needed for a specific OS. |
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Partition
- A partition defines a portion of a hard disk for use by an OS. It
has an ID to identify the file system type (how the data is stored
in the partition). There are three basic types of partitions, Primary,
Extended and Logical. |
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Partition
Wizard™ - This Wizard makes it a snap to maximize your disk resources.
It makes decisions based on your current system and objectives. This
is an exclusive feature of Partition Commander. |
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Primary
- This is the most common partition type. You can have up to four
primary partitions on each drive. |
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Reboot
- See 'Boot'. |
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Resize
- You can increase or decrease the size of Partitions used for Windows
95/98/Me/NT/2000/XP, DOS, Linux and others. The Resize feature in
Partition Commander 6 and System Commander 2000 supports most standard
file systems including FAT, FAT32, NTFS, Linux Ext2 and Linux Swap.
The data within the partition is preserved. |
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Restart
- This is a special safety recovery process when a system is powered
down or accidentally reset during a critical phase of a Resize, Move
or Conversion operation. The Restart disk is used to complete the
task, since the partitioning operations have not completed. |
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Sector
- This is the smallest chunk of data on a drive. On PC systems a sector
holds 512 bytes or characters of information. Multiple sectors often
make up a cluster, the smallest chunk of data that the OS will deal
with. Also see 'Cylinder'. |
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Surface
scan - A surface scan tests each sector of the partition for possible
faults. If a bad area is found, it is set aside, to avoid use by the
OS. While most new drives handle this step internally, it is always
wise to perform the surface scan as part of the format process. This
is the default operation of VCOM's partitioning Create and Format
functions. |
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System
Commander® - This utility allows you to boot to different OSes
installed on your system. |
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TrueDOS™
- The ability for System Commander 2000 to create a real DOS prompt
choice for Windows Me/98/95. Without System Commander 2000, Windows
Me provides no way to get to a true DOS prompt. |
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Unallocated
space - See 'Free space'. |
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Undo - Allows you to undo the last partitioning action such
as delete or format on the selected partition. Undo Delete is one
level deep, meaning if you delete two partitions, only the last partition
is recoverable. Undo delete works with all partition types.
Note that the
BackStep Wizard, described below is a multi-level undo, and can
undo multiple deletes so long as no other operation writes to the
deleted area of the disk.
Undo format
saves undo information into the partition when you format a partition
with our product. If no files are added to the partition, it can
be unformatted anytime in the future. This means you can exit and
later return and unformat a FAT or FAT32 partition.
The BackStep
Wizard is multi-level and can undo any partitioning action as long
as that action can currently be undone, even if you exit the program.
Some actions such as move cannot be BackStepped in the current session
if another partition has moved into the region where it previously
resided, but it can later be BackStepped if that region becomes
free. Actions such as delete can never be BackStepped if the region
it previously occupied is now written over by adding or moving another
partition. A BackStep action cannot be undone.
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Unhide
- This makes a partition visible if previously hidden. See Hide. |
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Used
space - This is the space in a partition that currently holds
your programs and data. The maximum used space is the size of your
partition. |
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Unused
space - This is the space in a partition that has not be used
for data or programs. It is available for new additions. An empty
or new partition has all of the space available for use. |
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Validate
- This function looks for problems in FAT and FAT32 partitions. It
is similar to Windows ScanDisk or CHKDSK, but does not make any changes
to the partition. |
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