Is it possible for fixed sized partitioning to suffer from external partitioning?
My sir said it's not possible and that fixed sized partitioning can only suffer from internal fragmentation. But consider this case, a fixed sized memory of 30Kb, divided into 3 partitions of 10Kb each and a process of 10Kb resides in the middle partition. Now a new process of 20Kb requires memory, but it can't be assigned memory because even if the required memory is available, it is not contiguous. Isn't this external fragmentation?
But consider this case, a fixed sized memory of 30Kb, divided into 3 partitions of 10Kb each and a process of 10Kb resides in the middle partition. Now a new process of 20Kb requires memory, but it can't be assigned memory because even if the required memory is available, it is not contiguous. Isn't this external fragmentation?
No.
For fixed size partitioning you can't allocate anything larger than a partition; so even if all partitions were empty the allocation would fail because it's larger than the size of a partition (20 Kib > 10 KiB).
For allocations that are possible (not larger than a partition) external fragmentation is impossible (mostly because it becomes internal fragmentation instead).