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Date:      Wed, 15 Oct 1997 10:00:08 -0500 (CDT)
From:      Mark Tinguely <tinguely@plains.NoDak.edu>
To:        jacques@wired.ctech.ac.za
Cc:        freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject:   Re: damn, damn, damn ... getting confused here.
Message-ID:  <199710151500.KAA11082@plains.NoDak.edu>

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block devices (have filesystems stored on media)
/dev/XX#P or /dev/XX#sP 

raw devices (use raw data on media, consider any filesystem on media as data)
/dev/rXX#P or /dev/rXX#sP 

	XX = driver (wd, sd, od, cd, vn, st, ...)
	#  = unit number
	P  = partition (a, b, c, d, e, f, g, h)

many drives can be broken into logical units called "partitions". the term
partitions can be confusing because some devices like drives have their
own seperate logical units that are called partitions, FreeBSD can use
a disk partition, and that disk partition is treated as one unit. FreeBSD
partitions refer to slicing the FreeBSD into logical units. To give the
FreeBSD logical units inside a disk's partition, we can the FreeBSD units
"slices" (and hense the terminology "slice").

	|	$
	|	$
	|	$ DOS
	|	$
	|	$
	|	*		a <- Unix partition (slice) a  <-|
	|	*		b <- Unix partition (slice) b  <-| together
	|	* FreeBSD	g <- Unix partition (slice) g  <-| makes
	|	*		h <- Unix partition (slice) h  <-| c partition

some Unix partitions (slices), have special meanings:

	a	first partition -- boot partition, if on boot drive
	b	usually used as a swap partition
	c	the whole partition

the disklabel command defines the unix partitions (slices), when you use
non-unix partitions, there is generally only one partition and you use the
c partition for the mount/read.

--mark.



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