From owner-freebsd-questions Wed Sep 2 17:44:58 1998 Return-Path: Received: (from majordom@localhost) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.8/8.8.8) id RAA09795 for freebsd-questions-outgoing; Wed, 2 Sep 1998 17:44:58 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG) Received: from lariat.lariat.org (lariat.lariat.org [206.100.185.2]) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.8/8.8.8) with ESMTP id RAA09777 for ; Wed, 2 Sep 1998 17:44:51 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from brett@lariat.org) Received: (from brett@localhost) by lariat.lariat.org (8.8.8/8.8.6) id SAA02590; Wed, 2 Sep 1998 18:43:43 -0600 (MDT) Message-Id: <199809030043.SAA02590@lariat.lariat.org> X-Sender: brett@mail.lariat.org X-Mailer: QUALCOMM Windows Eudora Pro Version 4.1.0.49 (Beta) Date: Wed, 02 Sep 1998 18:41:52 -0600 To: Scott Blachowicz , Dan Nelson , sab@seanet.com From: Brett Glass Subject: Re: MSDOS extended partitions and "slices" Cc: Doug White , questions@FreeBSD.ORG In-Reply-To: <19980902172833.A3976@dniquote.com> References: <199809030005.SAA02250@lariat.lariat.org> <199809022113.PAA00535@lariat.lariat.org> <199808080608.AAA16222@lariat.lariat.org> <199808021131.FAA12204@lariat.lariat.org> <199808080608.AAA16222@lariat.lariat.org> <199809021901.MAA21131@two.sabami.seaslug.org> <199809022113.PAA00535@lariat.lariat.org> <19980902175652.A11500@emsphone.com> <199809030005.SAA02250@lariat.lariat.org> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Sender: owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG At 05:28 PM 9/2/98 -0700, Scott Blachowicz wrote: >On Wed, Sep 02, 1998 at 06:02:21PM -0600, Brett Glass wrote: >> At 05:56 PM 9/2/98 -0500, Dan Nelson wrote >> >> >Sure it's logical. FDISK slices are always numbers; disklabel >> >partitions are always letters. >> >> DOS logical drives are not slices! They're the equivalent of >> disklabel partitions and should have letters at the end. > >Depends on how you define things. If you define a "slice" as a section of the >disk whose dimensions are defined outside of FreeBSD (i.e. a DOS/NT/whatever >partioning program) and a "partition" as a subdivision whose dimensions ARE >defined by FreeBSD, then the terminology works. Or...whatever DOS/BIOS looks >at as a "drive" gets translated to a FreeBSD "slice". > >The way you're looking at is that each primary partition should correspond to >a FreeBSD slice and that a DOS logical drive is the logical (pun intended :-)) >analogue to the FreeBSD partition. > >Either way seems to make sense to me, with the former being a little more >flexible (esp. if you're into partitioning things up a lot). The latter is actually more flexible, as it accounts for any scheme in which one of the four possible "slices" (to use the FreeBSD parlance) is then subdivided. (IBM's standard allows for no more than four.) What's more, it reflects the hierarchy better; there's no guessing about the device name of "the second logical DOS drive in the extended DOS partition." With the scheme that's being used now, you have to know what other partitions contain before you can figure out the name. --Brett To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message