From: mlipsie@rdm09.std.com (Mike Lipsie MPU)
Subject: Re: Splitting drives into two - does it make them faster?
Organization: Mitsubishi Electric Research Laboratories, Inc.
Lines: 33

In article <6D8q2B5w165w@infopls.chi.il.us> andyross@infopls.chi.il.us (Andrew Rossmann) writes:
>guyd@austin.ibm.com (Guy Dawson) writes:
>
>> > the partitions take up disk space, having 3 or 4 partition will cost
>> > somewhere between 4-8 meg of hard disk space, if you can afoord this
>> > luxury more power to you, its your choice.
>> >
>>
>> Where does all this disk space go? The DOS partition table is fixed length
>> and every hard disk carries one. What is useing this lost 4-8MB?
>
>  If I remember right, the partition table is allocated an entire CYLINDER.
>To find out how much it takes up, you need to calculate:
>heads * sectors * 512
>
>  Also, if you create an extended partition, there is a second 'partition'
>in there for the logical drives.

I think the original respondent (Guy Dawson?) was refering to something
much more elementary.

Every partition (whether it is the entire disk or not) has two FATs and
an initial directory.

If you have a small disk (50 meg or less), I would recommend that it remain
a single partition. Unless you have some other consideration.

If you have a large disk (greater than 200 meg), multiple partitions can
make sense.

-- 
Mike Lipsie                                (work) mlipsie@ca.merl.com
Mitsubishi Electronic Research Laboratory  (home) mikel@dosbears.UUCP
