Partition

A partition is a logical division of a hard disk created so that you can have different operating systems on the same hard disk or to create the appearance of having separate hard drives for file management, multiple users, or other purposes. A partition is created when you format the hard disk.

An isolated, new instance of the host OS, lying on it, and featuring autonomous characteristics like host name, network settings and installed applications. Partitions are management by a partitioning solution.

A partition is an individual section of computer storage media such as a hard drive. For example a single hard drive may be divided into several partitions. When a hard drive is divided into partitions, each partition is designated by a separate drive letter, i.e., C, D, etc.

A section of space on a physical disk that functions as if it were a separate disk.

See also: application partition, configuration partition, directory partition, schema partition

A partition is the portion of a physical disk or LUN that functions as though it were a physically separate disk. Once the partition is created, it must be formatted and assigned a drive letter before data can be stored on it. On basic disks, partitions can contain basic volumes, which include primary partitions and logical drives. On dynamic disks, partitions are known as dynamic volumes, which include simple, striped, spanned, mirrored, and RAID–5 (striped with parity) volumes.