Wikipedia
Disk partitioning or disk slicing is the creation of one or more regions on a hard disk or other secondary storage, so that an operating system can manage information in each region separately. These regions are called partitions or volumes. It is typically the first step of preparing a newly manufactured disk, before any files or directories have been created. The disk stores the information about the partitions' locations and sizes in an area known …
Disk partitioning - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia