ACRONIS TRUEIMAGE DELUXE User Manual

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ACRONIS TRUEIMAGE DELUXE User Manual Manual pdf 83 page image

Acronis TrueImage Deluxe 83Information about partitions on a hard disk is stored in a special disk area – in the 1stsector of the 0th cylinder, header 0, which is called a Partition Table. This sector iscalled the Master Boot Record, MBR.A physical hard disk can contain up to 4 primary partitions. This limitation is due onlyto the capacity of the Partition Table, which itself consists of only four partitions.However, this does not mean that you can install only 4 different operating systems.Modern software disk managers allows the installation of many more operatingsystems. For example, the Acronis OS Selector 5.0 Deluxe disk manager, allows a userto install up to 100 operating systems on one hard disk!Partitioning hard disks is a feature that is available in all operating systems.A.4 Creating Partitions for Other OSesIn this part of the Guide we have described the way to partition a hard diskby the FDISK program for the DOS/Windows operating system. As it hasbeen said above, the FDISK program creates primary and possibly (butnecessarily so) extended DOS partitions and logical partitions (disks) onthem, and can also leave disk space unallocated to be used by otheroperating systems. However, the Windows operating system, while being avery widely distributed operating system for PCs, is not the only operatingsystem.You can configure the hard disk of your computer to used with the Linuxoperating system. In this case you do not need to create either primary norextended DOS partitions (if you are not going to use DOS/Windows).For example, the installation program from the ASPLinux operating systemincludes a disk manager that allows partitioning a disk into partitions that canbe used by this OS.A.5 Primary and Logical PartitionsMany operating systems, including DOS and Windows 95, can only be bootedfrom primary partitions.Some operating systems do not see primary partitions except those theywere booted from (OS/2).Knowing these limitations allows you to decide what partitions are better touse and for what purposes. Primary partitions are better used for bootingoperating systems and storing system folders and files.Logical partitions can keep all the other information, since they are accessiblefrom most operating systems.