what's the difference between a Volume and a Partition in Windows 7 diskpart

Question

I was trying to follow the Intel guide for setting up iRST (Intel Rapid Start Technology) on my new laptop. The Intel manual says you need to create a *Volume that is as big or bigger than your available memory, set it to a specific id (id=84), then go into the iRST tool and adjust some settings.

Looking at the disk manager on the laptop, I see there is already a Partition labeled as "Hibernation Partition" which is a little bigger than the memory in my system. So it looks like iRST was already set up...BUT, it's a Partition, not a Volume.

Here's what the manual says to do: (from: http://download.intel.com/support/motherboards/desktop/sb/rapid_start_technology_user_guide.pdf)

diskpart
list disk 
select disk x (where x is the disk to use, there's only one disk in this laptop)
create partition primary size=X000 (where X000 is the size to create)
detail disk (which lists details for the disk.  This is where i get hung up)
select volume Z (where Z is the *partition you created previously)
** it says the 'detail disk' command will list the volume #, but it doesn't.
** 'detail disk' only lists two "volumes" for Recovery and OS.
** if i do 'list partition', i see the 8 GB *partition labeled as "Hibernation    Partition")
** so I can't continue with the following steps:
set id=84 override
exit

The reason I went looking for the manual is because when iRST is enabled in the BIOS, the system won't resume from sleep. When it's disabled, it works fine, but the system goes into (legacy?) Hibernation mode and takes a while to come out of Hibernation. the iRST is supposed to resume from deep sleep very quickly.

So, what's the difference between a Volume and a Partition?

Should I delete the Hibernation Partition and create a Hibernation Volume?

Anyone have any ideas?

(if it matters, this is on a Dell XPS 13 with BIOS A08)

Thanks!

J

Solution 1

They are typically not the same thing.

A volume is not the same thing as a partition. For example, a floppy disk might be accessible as a volume, even though it does not contain a partition, as floppy disks cannot be partitioned with most modern computer hardware. Also, an OS can recognize a partition without recognizing any volume associated with it, as when the OS cannot interpret the filesystem stored there. This situation occurs, for example, when Windows NT-based OSes encounter disks with non-Microsoft OS partitions, such as the ext3 filesystem commonly used with Linux. Another example occurs in the Intel world with the "Extended Partition". While these are partitions, they cannot contain a filesystem directly. Instead, "logical drives" (aka volumes) must be created within them.

Check this wiki for more info. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volume_(computing)

Solution 2

You are correct - the Intel user guide is wrong. You need the following commands:

diskpart  
list disk  
select disk x  
list partition   
rem *this will show you the partitions you already have*

create partition primary size=X000  
rem *(where X000 is the size to create)*  
list partition  
rem *this will now also show you the new partition you have created, partition z* 

select partition z  
detail partition  
rem *this will show you what attributes it has so far*

set id=84 override  
rem *this sets it to be a hibernation partition*  

detail partition  
rem *just in case you want to see the success of the previous command*  

exit

Solution 3

Microsoft decided to call a filesystem a "volume".
As there is no filesystem yet you won't see it in the list of volumes.
The set ID command operates on the selected partition. So I don't think you need to select the volume at all.

Comments

[voretaq7]

c'mon Dan you know better than to post a link-only answer -- edit in the content and collect some free rep! :-)

[DanBig]

I was feeling a bit lazy, updated with info.

[Tonny]

@DanBig Well done

[user170232]

so, a partition is a section of a disk, and a volume is a file system?

[DanBig]

Partitions are usually created on volumes. A volume is what is visible to the Operating System to create partitions on.