What does deleting a partition do?

  • Thread starter Thread starter Nehmo
  • Start date Start date
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Nehmo

When you delete a partition (on a disk with more than one partition),
say using PartitionMagic, what happens? The physical part of the disk
is still there, so what happens to it? Is it simply hidden? Does the
space still exist but in unformatted form? The remaining partitions
don't expand, do they?
 
Nehmo said:
When you delete a partition (on a disk with more than
one partition), say using PartitionMagic, what happens?
Click to expand...

The entry in the partition table is deleted and the space
occupied by that partition becomes free space on that drive.
The physical part of the disk is still there, so what happens to it?
Nothing.

Is it simply hidden?
Click to expand...

Nope. Its still visible in what is used to partition a drive.
Does the space still exist
Yes.

but in unformatted form?
Click to expand...

Free space, actually.
The remaining partitions don't expand, do they?
Click to expand...

Correct, they dont expand unless you run something that can do that.
 
Previously Nehmo said:
When you delete a partition (on a disk with more than one partition),
say using PartitionMagic, what happens? The physical part of the disk
is still there, so what happens to it? Is it simply hidden? Does the
space still exist but in unformatted form? The remaining partitions
don't expand, do they?
Click to expand...

The partition table entry for it is deleted. That is all. As a
result the OS does not identify that particular stretch of sectors
as a partition anymore. Re-entering the partition data into
the partition table makes it visible again. Some tools,
e.g. Gnu parted support searching for deleted partitions.
Some OSes, e.g. Linux (using the device mapper), let you access the
partition nonetheless if you know where on the disk it is (i.e.
number of first and last sector).

And no. The partition stays formatted and the other partitions do not
change.

Arno
 
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