Re: Partitions

[nospam [at] janes.demon.co.uk (Matthew Collins)]

On Fri, 21 Jan 2000 12:23:26 -0000, Foz <99969628 [at] mmu.ac.uk> wrote:

>sheflug - http://www.sheflug.co.uk
>
>Hi,
> 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?
>
>Thanks
>

Why does anything strange happen in the PC world?

Answer.

It's a backwards compatible Kludge that goes back to DOS days. Same as
the 640K memory limit, and other things.

If something seems strange, and a bit kludgy, it more than likely goes
back to a bodge job somebody did, just to get stuff working. Like the
Bios hard disk limits, 16MB DMA limit. ISA Bus speed. A20 Keyboard
controller. The list goes on.

You don't have to use a partition table that way. Nothing is set in
stone. FreeBSD for exmaple uses a completly different way of
organising partitions.
This does have the disadvantage that other OS can't use a hard disk
where FreeBSD has been installed. Unless you installed it using the
Compatible partition table option.
--
Matthew Collins

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