parted: Partitioning

1 
1 2.1 Introduction to Partitioning
1 ================================
1 
1 Partitioning is the process of dividing a storage device into local
1 sections, called partitions, which help organize multiple filesystems
1 and their associated operating systems.
1 
1   A storage device presents itself as a sequence of bytes, numbered
1 starting from zero and increasing until the maximum capacity of the
1 device is reached.  Bytes are normally read and written a sector at a
1 time, rather than individually.  Each sector contains a fixed number of
1 bytes, with the number determined by the device.
1 
1      +------------------------------------------------------------+
1      |            storage device with no partitions               |
1      +------------------------------------------------------------+
1      0 start                                                    end
1 
1   In order to store multiple filesystems, a storage device can be
1 divided up in to multiple partitions.  Each partition can be thought of
1 as an area which contains a real filesystem inside of it.  To show where
1 these partitions are on the device a small table is written at the
1 start, shown as PT in the diagram below.  This table is called a
1 partition table, or disklabel, and also stores the type of each
1 partition and some flags.
1 
1      +--+---------------+----------------+------------------------+
1      |PT|  Partition 1  |  Partition 2   |  Partition 3           |
1      +--+---------------+----------------+------------------------+
1      0 start                                                    end
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