Something I've wondered each time I fire up fdisk for some reason:
Is there an even handed way to convert BLOCKS into Bytes?
A typical fdisk readout:
Disk /dev/hda: 255 heads, 63 sectors, 2434 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 bytes
Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System /dev/hda1 * 1 513 4120641 7 HPFS/NTFS /dev/hda2 514 2434 15430432+ f Win95 Ext'd (LBA) /dev/hda5 514 705 1542208+ 83 Linux /dev/hda6 706 1215 4096543+ 83 Linux /dev/hda7 1216 1432 1743021 83 Linux /dev/hda8 1433 1503 570276 83 Linux /dev/hda9 1504 1535 257008+ 83 Linux /dev/hda10 1536 1552 136521 82 Linux swap /dev/hda11 1553 2203 5229126 83 Linux /dev/hda12 2204 2434 1855476 b Win95 FAT32
255*63=16065: each track is divided in 63 sectors, each one of 512 bytes. There are 128 "layers" (Ican't remember the correct name) each one, except one, with two sides. That makes 255 sides readable/writable by 255 magnetic heads. A cylinder is thus made of 255 tracks, each one of 63 sectors of half a kilobyte, which makes 16065*512 bytes. There are 2434 cylinders (2434 tracks on each of the 255 sides), thus 16065*512*2434=20020331520 bytes. The disks manufacturers count 1000 bytes in a kB, 1000 kB in a MB (and 1024 bytes in a KiB -kibibyte- , 1024 KiB in a MiB -mebibyte- see http://physics.nist.gov/cuu/Units/),so your disk is 20 GB. Your first partition is roughly 512 or 513 cylinders (go to expert mode in fdisk to know) which means 4120641 kB (4120641*1000 bytes): a block is 1000 bytes! Ouf I don't know the word for french "ouf" -:))!
