Sukhbir Singh

This post is for my friend – Faraz, who called me up and asked me about this. So here it is.

Why Partition?

Let us imagine a scenario in which you only one partition (C:\) on your PC. And you have everything on it – all your Mp3s, movies and other documents.

The problems with a single partition are many – your OS can get corrupted, a virus which can’t be removed (yes!), a root-kit or some other problem which is forcing you to format your hard-disk. In such a case, you will lose your all data or you will be forced to backup folder-by-folder to another media – which is a tidy process itself.

This is where partitioning comes in. You have different partitions for everything. One for the OS, the other for the data and someother for your music collection.

In this way, you can safely reinstall your OS – and preserve your data.

How To?

The most common partitioning tool is Partition Magic by Norton, though it is paid (expensive)

I recommend an open source alternative (as usual) called GParted which is based on the Linux kernel. It is fast, easy and FREE.

Go over to http://gparted.sourceforge.net and download the ISO (30 MB, fits on a biz-CD). Burn it to a CD and then boot your PC from the GParted Live CD. It will allow you to create, move or resize your partitions.

Common filesystems :

Windows – FAT,  FAT32 and NTFS

Linux – ext2, swap

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I had heard about something called Virtualization: to run multiple Operating Systems simultaneously. I had nothing else to do, so decided to give this a shot.

First, as always I went over to Wikipedia and here is what I found.

I decided to try VMware, downloaded a trial version and then I was raring to go.

The host operating system was Windows XP. I installed Windows 98 SE as guest operating system and here I was! Running two Operating Systems side-by-side! It looked way too cool!

Then I installed Ubuntu. So now I am running 3 Operating Systems: at once.

The good thing about virtualization is that the guest operating systems are isolated from the host operating system. The guest OS can be used for software testing and to run software that you doubt about. (The best example: software cracks)

Screenshots:
1. Windows 98SE on Windows XP.

2. Ubuntu Linux on Windows XP.