Editing Disk formatting (section)

=== Partitioning ===
{{main|Disk partitioning}}

Partitioning is the process of writing information into blocks of a storage device or medium to divide the device into several sub-devices, each of which is treated by the operating system as a separate device and, in some cases, to allow an operating system to be booted from the device.

On [[MS-DOS]], [[Microsoft Windows]], and UNIX-based operating systems (such as [[BSD]], [[Linux]] and [[macOS]]) this is normally done with a [[partition editor]], such as [[fdisk]], [[GNU Parted]], or [[Disk Utility]]. These operating systems support multiple partitions.

Floppy disks are not partitioned; however depending upon the OS they may require volume information in order to be accessed by the OS.

[[Partition editor]]s and ICKDSF today do not handle low-level functions for HDDs and optical disc drives such as writing timing marks, and they cannot reinitialize a modern disk that has been degaussed or otherwise lost the factory formatting.

IBM operating systems derived from [[CP-67]], e.g., [[z/VM]], maintain partitioning information for [[VM (operating system)#Minidisks|minidisks]] externally to the drive.