On Wednesday 26 May 2004, Steven.Satelle at aer-rianta.ie (Steven Satelle
(Service Desk)) wrote:
>Paul Jakma wrote:
>> There may be limits in how many an OS supports though, cant remember
>> if Linux has such a limit. It definitely had a limit in how many
>> partitions can be on a disk (least for scsi disks - was limited to 15
>> - probably still is).
>>>AFAIK, Scsi had a limit of 15, and IDE has a limit of (16 - 1(the extended
>partition which cant be used)). This is not on OS limit, it is the disk
>itself which cant handle it.
What HAVE you been smoking? A disk is just a bunch of sectors which can be
read and written. The division of a disk into partitions is something
completely arbitrary and used for the convenience of an OS. Most OS seem to
have a limit to the number of partitions can be put on a disk, usually because
that's an easier way of writing the code, and because whoever desigend the
system though that whatever number of partitions was allowed as a maximum was
enough for anybody.
But the disk itself only obeys commands to move the head here and there, and
to read or write data while it's there. It has no idea of the concept of
partitions.
Niall
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