Thank you for this flash into the past. I remember "disc geometry" and "chs values" from ancient BIOSes. So today I could set up 16 primary "partitions" by using losetup and /dev/loop0 to /dev/loop15, mount them in folders and encrypt them. Fine:-) Regards, Peter > --- Ursprüngliche Nachricht --- > Von: Jari Ruusu <jariruusu@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> > An: Peter_22@xxxxxx > Kopie: linux-crypto@xxxxxxxxxxxx > Betreff: Re: Harddisk sectors & partitioning > Datum: Wed, 13 Jul 2005 17:52:01 +0300 > > Peter_22@xxxxxx wrote: > > My harddisk has 390,716,865 sectors. > > I installed it into the PC and partitioned it as part of the setup of > SuSE > > Linux 8.2 a while ago. Fine so far. What wonders me is the fact that > only > > 390,684,734 sectors are used. So 32,131 sectors, which > equals > > 16,451,072 bytes or 15.68 MB, are left free. But for what? > > Is there a good reason why this space is left blank? Otherwise, can I > erase > > these sectors or set up a loop device on it? I have no idea what these > > spare-sectors serve for. > > Long time ago, disks used cylinder/head/sector access to data. All modern > disks are addressed using logical block numbers. MS-DOS style partition > tables still use some fake cylinder/head/sector info for partitions. > Usually > disk partitioning software creates partitions on full cylinder boundary. > Depending on that fake cylinder/head/sector setting, minimum disk space > allocation unit may be many megabytes. That may leave some partial fake > cylinders unused. > > IOW, blame your disk partitioning software. > > -- > Jari Ruusu 1024R/3A220F51 5B 4B F9 BB D3 3F 52 E9 DB 1D EB E3 24 0E A9 > DD > > - > Linux-crypto: cryptography in and on the Linux system > Archive: http://mail.nl.linux.org/linux-crypto/ -- GMX DSL = Maximale Leistung zum minimalen Preis! 2000 MB nur 2,99, Flatrate ab 4,99 Euro/Monat: http://www.gmx.net/de/go/dsl - Linux-crypto: cryptography in and on the Linux system Archive: http://mail.nl.linux.org/linux-crypto/
