Re: Sector sizes in the kernel

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On Mon, Mar 26, 2007 at 03:43:56PM +0200, Tzahi Fadida wrote:
> On Monday 26 March 2007 14:14, you wrote:
> > A sector is the smallest addressable entity on a disk. Almost all hard
> > drives have 512 byte sectors, though SCSI drives can be reformated with
> > a different sector size (512 to up to 524 bytes IIRC). Hard drives with
> > 1k sector sizes will become available in the near future.
> 
> As far as i know, the sector is not the smallest addressable entity on a disk, 
> in fact it is quite a huge thing. A sector includes all blocks on the radius 
> of a one side of a platter.

No. What you describe is a mathematical sector. A sector on a disk
drive is the smalles addressable entity of a track. (Multiple tracks on
different platters make a cylinder.)

> This is why it is confusing that they claim that 
> a sector is 512 bytes. A block is the smallest entity and it is indeed on 
> most drives 512 bytes.
> See here for a description of a sector:
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cylinder-head-sector

The Wikipedia entry is wrong or confusing at least. A sector is the
smallest addressable entity on a disk. That's what all storage vendors
also agree on.


Erik

- -- 
They're all fools. Don't worry. Darwin may be slow, but he'll
eventually get them. -- Matthew Lammers in alt.sysadmin.recovery
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