rmarks@KSP.Unisys.COM (Richard Marks) (09/28/90)
Hello all, Does anyone know what determines the size of a hard disk partition. I am very familiar with the boot records (I write boot record code for fun) and I know that there are four size and/or position related fields in the boot record: the start c/h/r the end c/h/r the start logical sector the number of logical sectors The question is which porgram uses what? I know that the partition boot record uses the starting c/h/r to initially load the DOS (or Unix) system. I guess that the amount of the partition that is used is really determined by the initial free disk chain put into the FAT tables. So I guess that format is the only program that is concerned with partition size. Does it use the end c/h/r or the number of logical sectors? Are their any other programs that get concerned about this?? The reason for this is that I noticed that on some machines with large SCSI disks the partition info and the disk size parameters are really wierd. I have one box where the partition and size info are based on the physical disk even though the SCSI interface works only via logical sectors?? (The normal SCSI technique is to fake out the system by using 64 heads and 32 sectors per track for 1 meg byte per cylinder.) regards to all, Richard Marks rmarks@KSP.unisys.COM