Re: Partitions

[Al Hudson <nospam [at] york.ac.uk>]

On Fri, 21 Jan 2000, Foz wrote:

> Continuing on the notion of partitions, there must be a reason
> for the partitions to be ordered in such a way, can someone
> actually tell me why?

Are you talking about the notional difference between physical and
logical, or the layout of partitions? Generally, if you look at hd
technology, a lot of it is bodge on top of bodge on top of bodge held
together with gaffer tape. Partitioning was initially limted to four
partitions per drive, I believe, and the rest was added later. It's all to
do with how the partition table is stored on the hard drive. The MBR (the
part of the hard drive storing partition data, etc.) has a finite space to
store boot strap (i.e, lilo), partition table info, etc., so that's where
these limits come from, and I dare say there will at some point be some
more bolt-on bodges that will extend these limits as demand increases....

Cheers,

Alex.

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