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Formerly, on disks formatted using the master boot record (MBR) partition layout, certain software components used hidden sectors of the disk for data storage purposes. For example, the Logical Disk Manager (LDM), on dynamic disks, stores metadata in a 1 MB area at the end of the disk which is not allocated to any partition.
Microsoft advertised DoubleSpace on the cover of MS-DOS 6 distributions (user's guide for MS-DOS 6 with Windows 3.1 pack-in pictured, DoubleSpace sticker top-right). In the most common usage scenario, the user would have one hard drive in the computer, with all the space allocated to one partition (usually as drive C:).
All Windows operating systems from Windows 95 onwards can be located on (almost) any partition, but the boot files (io.sys, bootmgr, ntldr, etc.) must reside on a primary partition. However, other factors, such as a PC's BIOS (see Boot sequence on standard PC ) may also impose specific requirements as to which partition must contain the primary OS.
With Windows 10 version 1709 and Windows Server 2019, the maximum implemented file size is 8 PB [a] minus 2 MB or 9,007,199,252,643,840 bytes. [ 6 ] Interoperability
Prior to the Windows Vista release, only one volume could be analyzed or defragmented at a time and only one instance could run. [8] Only local volumes can be defragmented; network volumes are not supported. [8] The GUI version prior to Windows Vista cannot be scheduled. However, the command line utility since Windows XP and later can be scheduled.
If the final size of a file subject to modification is known, storage for the entire file may be preallocated. For example, the Microsoft Windows swap file (page file) can be resized dynamically under normal operation, and therefore can become highly fragmented. This can be prevented by specifying a page file with the same minimum and maximum ...
In case of Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008, however, the volume's minimum size is 1.5 GB and must have a drive letter.) [39] Unlike previous versions of Windows, Vista's "diskpart" command-line tool includes the ability to shrink the size of an NTFS volume so that this volume may be created from already allocated space.
C: — First hard disk drive partition. D: to Z: — Other disk partitions get labeled here. Windows assigns the next free drive letter to the next drive it encounters while enumerating the disk drives on the system. Drives can be partitioned, thereby creating more drive letters. This applies to MS-DOS, as well as all Windows operating systems.