76 Copyright © Acronis International GmbH, 2002-2015
By assigning a particular partition type to a volume, you can mark the volume as a hidden volume (p.
74). For example, changing the partition type of an NTFS volume to 17h makes that volume hidden.
Partitioning
The process of creating a logical structure on a hard disk (p. 73).
Partitioning usually involves creating one or more volumes (p. 79) on the disk.
Acronis Disk Director is an example of a program that can perform partitioning.
Partitioning scheme
The method of organizing volumes on a disk.
There are two partitioning schemes: master boot record (MBR) and GUID partition table (GPT). A disk
whose partitioning scheme is MBR is called an MBR disk; a disk whose partitioning scheme is GPT is
called a GPT disk.
The partitioning scheme determines the number of volumes that the disk can have:
A basic MBR disk can have either four primary volumes (p. 76), or three primary volumes and an
unlimited number of logical volumes (p. 74).
A basic GPT disk can have up to 128 primary volumes.
The partitioning scheme also determines the maximum size of each volume:
The maximum volume size on an MBR disk is 2 terabytes.
The maximum volume size on a GPT disk is 16 exabytes (more than 16 million terabytes).
Partitioning scheme is also known as partitioning style or partition style.
Physical disk
A disk (p. 70) that is physically a separate device. Thus, floppy disks, hard disks and CD-ROMs are
physical disks.
Primary partition
See Primary volume (p. 76).
Primary volume
A volume which is located on a portion of a basic disk (p. 68) and works as if it were on a separate
hard disk.
Primary volumes often store files that are necessary to start the machine or an operating system.
Many operating systems can start only from a primary volume.
The number of primary volumes on the disk is limited and depends on the partitioning scheme (p.
76).
A primary volume is also called a primary partition.
