-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 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 -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.6 (GNU/Linux) iD8DBQFGB9NR/PlVHJtIto0RAulwAJ9r4KNZtGkjp7DCQBOB4U/syGxmDQCff1h+ PxQg4SP30qU9O042m1Ov1T4= =hjlq -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- -- To unsubscribe from this list: send an email with "unsubscribe kernelnewbies" to ecartis@xxxxxxxxxxxx Please read the FAQ at http://kernelnewbies.org/FAQ
