There are numerous controls on hard disk partitions: (1) the partitions cannot overlap, the probelity of data corruption become zero, (2) partitions cannot be moved, but their size can be changed (3) partitions reduces wastage of disk space because there should be zero gap between adjacent hard disk partitions.
Even though hard disk partitions are logically independent, they are connected when they are installed. At the system start up.
On MS installed computers each Hard Disk Drive and each partitions of every hard drive as well as is nominated by a drive letter. The 1 and the main partition on the first Hard Disk Drive is always nominated by C:, and other partition by letters such as D: and E: or the other drives.
There are many ways to know about hard disk partitions on Linux operating system. df command is the easiest, but this only shows those hard drive partitions that are presently mounted. It is mainly suitable to use this command with its -h i.e.,
df -h
fdisk, which is positioned in the /sbin directory,to show the hard disk partitions on the computer, and also can be used to change the partitions of the hard disk drive.
On computer in which any user is allowed to become the root user, such as a Personal computer, the access the root can be done easily by using the su command. Then fdisk command can be used to access the Hard Disk Drive, with the first Hard Disk Drive designated by /dev/hda, the second designated by /dev/hdb. Thus, the mentioned command would access the 1 Hard Disk Drive:
/sbin/fdisk /dev/hda
The hard disk partition table for the selected Hard Drive can then be seen by the letter p and pressing the ENTER key.