User manual ACRONIS OS SELECTOR 8.0

[. . . ] User's Guide OS Selector 8. 0 Compute with confidence www. acronis. com Copyright © SWsoft, 2000-2002. Windows and MS-DOS are registered trademarks of Microsoft Corporation. All other trademarks and copyrights referred to are the property of their respective owners. Distribution of substantively modified versions of this document is prohibited without the explicit permission of the copyright holder. [. . . ] You may also visit our web-site for additional updated information ­ www. acronis. com Copyright © SWsoft, 2000-2002 67 Chapter 7. Main Operations with Disk Administrator This chapter covers the following operations with partitions: Creating a Partition Copying or Moving a Partition Resizing a Partition Formatting a Partition Deleting a Partition Changing the Partition Label View Details about a Partition Getting Detailed Information about a Hard Disk 7. 1 Creating a Partition The Create Partition function allows you to create primary or logical partitions. Up to four primary partitions, or three primary and an unlimited number of logical partitions can be on one hard disk. Usually primary partitions are created to install operating systems on them, and logical ones are used for all other purposes like software installation and data storage. If you have several hard disks then you can increase productivity by installing operating systems and software on different disks. For more details about partitions see Chapter 2 «Basic Information». If there is none, you can create some by reducing the size of one of the existing partitions. Desired position of free space on a disk may be obtained by moving the partitions. You should avoid changes in letter assignment for partitions that may be referred to by different configuration files and system registries. Hiding the newly created partition(s) from the operating systems for which they change the letter sequence can do this. See paragraph 2. 9 «Assignment of Letters in Different Operating Systems» for details about tracking the letter assignment for a given operating system. 68 Chapter 7 : Main Operations with Disk Administrator 7. 1. 1 Creating Bootable Partitions Before creating a partition where you plan to install an operating system, you should know the limitations that different operating systems impose on their boot partition. This table sums up such information about several operating systems. Supports Linux Ext2/Ext3 Free space required for installation1 10M 50M 150M 300M 600M 100M 150M 700M 600M Bootable from Second hard disk Operating system Logical partition MS-DOS 6. 22 Windows 95 (MS-DOS 7. 0) Windows 95 OSR2 (MS-DOS 7. 1) Windows 98 (MS-DOS 7. 1) Windows ME (MS-DOS 8. 0) Windows NT 3. x Windows NT 4. 0 Windows 2000 ASPLinux 1 2 +2 +2 ­ + ­ ­ ­ 2G ­ + ­ ­ ­ 8G +2 +2 + + ­ ­ no +2 +2 + + ­ ­ no +2 +2 + + ­ ­ no ­ ­ + ­ + ­ 2G 2G3 ­ ­ + ­ + ­ ­ + ­ + + + + + + +4 ­ + no No ­ Approximate value. ­ With help of Acronis OS Selector and if the partitions are hidden so that the boot partition is labeled with letter C:. 3 4 ­ Fixed in Service Pack 4. ­ Experimental support. Copyright © SWsoft, 2000-2002 Maximum boot code length FAT16 FAT32 NTFS 69 7. 1. 2 Creating a Partition with Disk Administrator Creation of a partition requires the following steps: 1. Choose the «Create partition» operation (from the menu, toolbar or by pressing Insert key). Confirm partition creation by pressing Enter key or the OK button in the lower part of the box. In the «Create partition» dialog box you can set the following: · On the «Standard» sheet: · Will the partition be primary or logical. Disk Administrator does not allow the creation of primary partitions if there are no more empty entries in the MBR partition table. You should also keep in mind that other partition manipulation software might misinterpret a primary partition as a logical one. The file system that will be created on the partition: FAT16, FAT32, NTFS, Linux Ext2/Ext3, Linux ReiserFS, or Linux Swap. It is also possible to create a partition without a file system (if, for example, you further plan to format it for a file system that is not supported by Disk Administrator). Partition type is chosen automatically, based on partition format and size, but can be changed manually later via the change partition type operation. Size of the partition and its position within the selected free space. [. . . ] Besides, some partition managing software and boot managers allow hiding partitions. Information about partitions is stored in the partition table. 134 Appendix F. All the partitions on a hard disk make a tree with the root in the MBR partition table. Many operating systems and programs assume that any partition table but MBR may contain not more than one partition entry and one table entry, and it simplifies the partition structure greatly ­ all the logical partitions form one chain. [. . . ]