- FIPS (computer program)
Infobox_Software
name = FIPS
caption =
developer = Arno Schäfer
latest_release_version = 1.5
latest_release_date =August 22 ,1995
operating_system =MS-DOS
genre = Disk partitioning
license = GPL
website = [http://bmrc.berkeley.edu/people/chaffee/fips/fips.html]FIPS (Fully Interactive Partition Splitter) is a
DOS program for non-destructive splitting ofFAT hard disk partition s.Splitting partitions is an alternative to deleting the partitions and creating new ones using software such as
fdisk , the advantage of which is that the data is not lost. The most common use is installing multiple operating systems on a single computer.FIPS is
free software , licensed under theGNU General Public License (GPL).Limitations
FIPS only works on
primary partition s that are formatted using the FAT file system. Most new machines with Windows pre-installed useNTFS , leaving FIPS obsolete for its intended purpose of resizing existing Windows installations to install Linux. In addition, FIPS cannot grow partitions due to technical limitations with the design, and partitions shrunk with it have some wasted space since it does not shrink theFile Allocation Table . The filesystem to be shrunk must also be defragmented before FIPS is run - since FIPS does not move data, any data near the end of the partition prevents it from being resized.These limitations have caused it to be largely superseded by more modern tools with better filesystem support, more advanced resizing methods and more complete partitioning functionality, such as
GNU Parted andPartitionMagic See also
*
fdisk
*cfdisk
*GNU Parted
*GParted is aGTK+ -based graphical version of Parted
*QtParted is a Qt-based graphical version of Parted
*PartitionMagic External links
* [http://bmrc.berkeley.edu/people/chaffee/fips/fips.html FIPS homepage]
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