This has nothing much to do with anything important, but it bothers me.

We all know what people refer to when they say,

"I am going to partition my disk"

That means they are going to do a bunch of "actions" that, uh,
"partition" a disk.

Fine, but is there a slightly different meaning to the word "partition"?

Using partition as a noun, for example.

As in "Partitions 'Foo' and 'Bar' are both the same size".

If so, what makes a partition a partition?

In other words, what are the characteristics of a partition that makes
it different from something that is not a partition?

Just curious.

Mark-

Mark Conrad wrote:

> This has nothing much to do with anything important, but it bothers me.
>
> We all know what people refer to when they say,
>
> "I am going to partition my disk"
>
> That means they are going to do a bunch of "actions" that, uh,
> "partition" a disk.
>
> Fine, but is there a slightly different meaning to the word "partition"?
>
> Using partition as a noun, for example.
>
> As in "Partitions 'Foo' and 'Bar' are both the same size".
>
> If so, what makes a partition a partition?
>
> In other words, what are the characteristics of a partition that makes
> it different from something that is not a partition?
>
> Just curious.
>
> Mark-

A partition is a logical division of a physical device. A drive has to
have at least one partition, but several partitions, i.e., logical
drives can be created from one physical device.

=:~)

--
"The day Microsoft makes something that doesn't suck is probably the day
they start making vacuum cleaners." - Ernest Jan Plugge

news at cdss dot fsnet dot co dot uk

In article <w_WdnXpGN7CdRGfdRVn-hA[at]eclipse.net.uk>, Chas
<nospam[at]nospam.comINVALID> wrote:

> A partition is a logical division of a physical device. A drive has to
> have at least one partition, but several partitions, i.e., logical
> drives can be created from one physical device.

Thanks, that makes sense.

What was really confusing me was that _one_ of those logical
divisions did not appear on my pdisk printout.

Namely, the "Driver_Descriptor_Map" that occupies sector zero.

I will just attribute that ommission to some anomoly as to how pdisk
works.

Thanks again,

Mark-