Partitions for Application Usage?

[yanshay]

I want to have two partitions for my application usage.

1. Partition with data that will be flashed to the device.
2. Partition for the application to store data.

I notice that the default partition table has a partition called nvs of type data/nvs.
Then I noticed in https://docs.espressif.com/projects/esp-idf/en/stable/esp32/api-guides/partition-tables.html that nvs subtype is for some special key/value API. And used for wifi data.

• Is that also the case when using esp-hal?
• Is that API available to use?
• Is that partition needed in the first place or can I use it or removed it?

If I want a partition for application use, what name/type/subtype should I use?
If I want it to be flashed, does it need to be different type/subtype than if I want to use it for application storage?