From PC-DOS :

PC-DOS 3.30

The final version of the "classic PC-DOS family," PC-DOS 3.30, had a few major improvements. First, multiple partitions were supported, still up to 32 MB each.

Quick anecdote, in the late 80s, most hard drive came in either 20 or 40 MB in size. 32 MB drives were rare. So, using PC-DOS or MS-DOS 3.30 most owners would partition a 40 MB drive into a 32 and an 8 MB partition and largely ignore the 8 MB partition. The reason for this is if you didn't know the ins and out of fdisk, this is how it would partition the drive by default even though if you just either read the documentation or played around with the settings, you would find that you could easily partition it into 2 equal 20 MB partitions.

This might mean that multiple partitions were created to allow the usage of disks larger than 32MB without waste.

Other sources about the subject :

• Which MS-/PC-DOS version was the first to allow multiple partitions to be used?

• How did MS-DOS assign drive letters in the case of more than two floppy disk drives?

From PC-DOS :

PC-DOS 3.30

The final version of the "classic PC-DOS family," PC-DOS 3.30, had a few major improvements. First, multiple partitions were supported, still up to 32 MB each.

Quick anecdote, in the late 80s, most hard drive came in either 20 or 40 MB in size. 32 MB drives were rare. So, using PC-DOS or MS-DOS 3.30 most owners would partition a 40 MB drive into a 32 and an 8 MB partition and largely ignore the 8 MB partition. The reason for this is if you didn't know the ins and out of fdisk, this is how it would partition the drive by default even though if you just either read the documentation or played around with the settings, you would find that you could easily partition it into 2 equal 20 MB partitions.

This suggests that multiple partitions were created to allow the usage of disks larger than 32MB without waste.

Actually, it stands to reason that disk formats were driven by the evolution in disk technology. Larger disks meant the evolution of partitions, extended partitions, MBR and now GPT.

Other sources about the subject :

• Which MS-/PC-DOS version was the first to allow multiple partitions to be used?

• How did MS-DOS assign drive letters in the case of more than two floppy disk drives?