[gentoo-user] Who believes in cylinders?
There's been some talk here recently about partitions versus cylinder boundaries, and when or even if they need to line up properly. I'm confused. For many years now I've ignored cylinders completely because I've read that modern disks are addressed by sector number only, and disks don't know or care about cylinders. The cylinder seems to be a fiction that sticks around like a drunk who refuses to leave when the party is over. The recent thread about the new disks with 1024-byte sectors has me even more confused. IIUC the new disks *do* care (at least) about where a partition begins relative to it's own 1024-byte hardware sectors, and that part makes perfect sense. But, to me, that still leaves the cylinder as a completely useless fiction that needs to join MSDOS in the scrap heap of history. Am I right to separate the 1024-byte sector problem from cylinders as being two entirely different and orthogonal ideas? Is there really any need for the cylinder these days? Happy Friday :)
Re: [gentoo-user] Who believes in cylinders?
On Samstag 27 Februar 2010, walt wrote: There's been some talk here recently about partitions versus cylinder boundaries, and when or even if they need to line up properly. I'm confused. For many years now I've ignored cylinders completely because I've read that modern disks are addressed by sector number only, and disks don't know or care about cylinders. The cylinder seems to be a fiction that sticks around like a drunk who refuses to leave when the party is over. The recent thread about the new disks with 1024-byte sectors has me even more confused. IIUC the new disks *do* care (at least) about where a partition begins relative to it's own 1024-byte hardware sectors, and that part makes perfect sense. But, to me, that still leaves the cylinder as a completely useless fiction that needs to join MSDOS in the scrap heap of history. Am I right to separate the 1024-byte sector problem from cylinders as being two entirely different and orthogonal ideas? Is there really any need for the cylinder these days? Happy Friday :) no. Until you have to beat fdisk into submission. Yes, cylinders are anachronistic crap. Sadly a lot of tools (and the kernel) are still infected.
Re: [gentoo-user] Who believes in cylinders?
On Fri, Feb 26, 2010 at 4:09 PM, walt w41...@gmail.com wrote: SNIP The recent thread about the new disks with 1024-byte sectors has me even more confused. hehe Very sorry. ;-) IIUC the new disks *do* care (at least) about where a partition begins relative to it's own 1024-byte hardware sectors, and that part makes perfect sense. And that is really the important point from that thread. But, to me, that still leaves the cylinder as a completely useless fiction that needs to join MSDOS in the scrap heap of history. I believe you're correct. Am I right to separate the 1024-byte sector problem from cylinders as being two entirely different and orthogonal ideas? Yes. Cylinders do exist on the disk but they are not something to be used anymore. Is there really any need for the cylinder these days? No, not as I understand it. There may be some bits of software that suggest they can use them, but I think with the advent of LBA directly addressing CHS is now retired with only sector addressing being important due to the way the data is physically placed on the drive. Who cares what cylinder it's on, and who cares which head is getting the data? It doesn't matter to us users... Cheers, Mark
Re: [gentoo-user] Who believes in cylinders?
- Original Message From: Mark Knecht markkne...@gmail.com To: gentoo-user@lists.gentoo.org On Fri, Feb 26, 2010 at 4:09 PM, walt wrote: Is there really any need for the cylinder these days? No, not as I understand it. There may be some bits of software that suggest they can use them, but I think with the advent of LBA directly addressing CHS is now retired with only sector addressing being important due to the way the data is physically placed on the drive. Who cares what cylinder it's on, and who cares which head is getting the data? It doesn't matter to us users... True user's don't care. However, Boot Loader writers (e.g. grub) need to care about it since LBA is not quite available right away - you have to focus on other things until you can load the rest of the boot loader. So it's not 100% dead, but yes - most things no longer need to care about it. Ben
