diskpartitions

Disk partitions are contiguous sections of a storage device that are managed as separate units. Each partition can host its own file system and appears as an independent volume to the operating system. Partitions enable organization of data, isolation of system files, and multi-boot configurations. A typical disk may contain a system partition, a recovery partition, and one or more data partitions.

Partition schemes define how a disk is organized and recognized by the firmware and OS. The legacy Master Boot Record (MBR) partitions a disk into up to four primary partitions, or three primary partitions plus one extended partition containing logical drives; MBR also limits disk size to about 2 terabytes. The GUID Partition Table (GPT) is the modern standard, supporting disks larger than 2 TB and many partitions, with redundancy and integrity checks. GPT is commonly used on systems with UEFI.

File systems applied to partitions determine how data is stored and accessed. Windows commonly uses NTFS, FAT32, or exFAT; Linux uses ext4, Btrfs, XFS; macOS uses APFS or HFS+. The choice affects performance, features such as permissions and compression, and cross-platform compatibility.

Management and usage. Partitions are created, resized, deleted, and formatted with partitioning tools. They can be assigned drive letters or mount points and configured to be boot partitions or data volumes. Operations carry risk of data loss; maintaining backups before making changes is advised.