Date: Mon, 10 Aug 1998 16:35:57 -0700 (PDT) From: Doug White <dwhite@resnet.uoregon.edu> To: Brett Glass <brett@lariat.org> Cc: questions@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: MSDOS extended partitions and "slices" Message-ID: <Pine.BSF.4.00.9808101631480.29015-100000@resnet.uoregon.edu> In-Reply-To: <199808080608.AAA16222@lariat.lariat.org>
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On Fri, 7 Aug 1998, Brett Glass wrote:
> >This is fully normal. Extended partitions get mapped to extra slice
> >numbers since one extended partition can have multiple logical disks.
> >wd1s2 is the extended partition itself, which isn't that useful.
>
> But.... Waitaminnit. If you have an extended DOS partition with some
> number of logical DOS drives within it, you should REALLY see:
>
> C: wd1s1
> Extended DOS partition: wd1s2
> D: wd1s2a
> E: wd1s2b
> F: wd1s2c
> Third partition (FreeBSD, Linux, whatever): wd1s3
> Fourth partition: wd1s4
>
> This would be consistent with the actual structure. The logical DOS drives
> lie WITHIN the extended partition, which is one of the four possible
> partitions, or slices.
It's a decent argument, but:
1. There is a maximum of 8 partitions that can be defined this way (a-h).
2. The B partition is only used for swap.
3. Letters C and D are reserved for the slice partition and the
whole-disk partition in BSD parlance, respectively.
4. I bet I'd get people trying to disklabel an extended MSDOS partition.
So in the end it's confusing to the end user. Arguably the extra-slice
system is confusing, but us old UNIX hats won't try anything silly on a
DOS partition. :)
One of the great things about open source OS's is that if you don't like
it, rewrite it. ;-)
Doug White | University of Oregon
Internet: dwhite@resnet.uoregon.edu | Residence Networking Assistant
http://gladstone.uoregon.edu/~dwhite | Computer Science Major
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