Differences between volume, Partition and drive

1. a drive is a physical block disk. For example: /dev/sda .

2. A Partition A Drive can is divided into some logic block disk. These logic block disk is named partition. For example: /dev/sda1 , /dev/sda2 .

3. a volume is also a logic block disk. Volume is a concept involved with partition. A volume can contain many partition. You can take a look at LVM project to understand the concept of a volume. http://sourceware.org/lvm2/.

The term  Drive  refers to a physical storage device such as a hard disk, solid-state disk, removable USB Flash drive etc. In Unix-like operating systems devices is represented by special file system objects called  device Nodes &NB Sp;which is visible under the  /dev  directory.

Storage devices is labeled under  /dev  according to the type of device followed by a Ifying the order in which they were detected by the system. In Linux prior to kernel version 2.6.20 the prefix  HD  signified a IDE device, so for instance The device files  /dev/hda ,   /dev/hdb and  /dev/hdc   corresponded to the first, second and third IDE device respectively. The prefix  SD was originally used for SCSI devices, but are now used for all pata and s Ata devices, including devices on a IDE bus. If there is more than-such devices in the system, devices from the 27th onwards is labeled  /dev/sdaa,  /dev/sdab  and so on.

A physical storage device can be divided into multiple logical storage units known as partitions. Each partition would show up under as /dev a separate device node. A number after the device letter signifies the number of the partion, so for example the device node files and /dev/sda1 /dev/sda2 Refer to the first and second partition of the first PATA device. Note that on PCs using MBR partitioning, due to the limit of four primary paritions and the the-the-extended is ha Ndled the partition numbering can slightly differ from the actual partition count.

Other unix-like systems could refer to disks and partitions on other ways. For example, FreeBSD uses /dev/adaX (where x was one or more digits) to refer to PATA disks and /dev/adaXpY (where x and Y are both O NE or more digits) to refer to partitions on PATA disks.

The term volume in Linux are related to the Logical volume Manager (LVM), which can used to manage MAS s storage devices. A physical volume is a storage device or partition. A logical volumecreated by the LVM is a logical storage device which can span multiple physical volumes.

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A partition is a just a space crafted out of a disk.
For Example-you could set aside a space of up to a partition from a hard disk of 1 TB.

A volume is a partition this has the been formatted into a filesystem.
A partition is the little use unless formatted. And when we format a partition to NTFS, FAT32, Ext4 etc, it becomes a volume and is usable.

You can create a new volume or partition in any disk this has empty space. If the disk is dynamic, a volume is created. If the disk is a basic disk, a primary partition is created. If The empty space is part of a extended partition, a new logical drive would be created. All of them called a simple volume, but each one a different structure.

Note  you can no longer create an extended partition in Disk Manager. If you are need to create a extended partition, you need to use DiskPart.exe. But there's really no longer any need for extended partitions.

Each partition would show up under as /dev a separate device node.  A number after the device letter signifies the number of the partion, so for example the device node files and /dev/sda1 /dev/sda2 Refer to the first and second partition of the first PATA device. Note that on PCs using MBR partitioning, due to the limit of four primary paritionsand the "the" Extended partitions is handled the partition numbering can slightly differ from the actual partition count.

In Windows Server, the distinction between volumes and partitions is somewhat murky. When using Disk Management, a regular partition on a basic Disk was called a simple volume, even though Technicall Y a simple volume requires, the disk be a dynamic disk.

Differences between volume, Partition and drive