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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