Subject: Re: Disklabel question...
To: Mason Loring Bliss <mason@acheron.middleboro.ma.us>
From: Manuel Bouyer <bouyer@antioche.lip6.fr>
List: port-i386
Date: 11/28/1999 21:30:26
On Sun, Nov 28, 1999 at 10:24:27AM -0500, Mason Loring Bliss wrote:
> Hi, all.
> 
> I've got a Maxtor 13-gig disk. The specs on the disk note 16383 cylinders.
> Disklabel(8) notes 16383 cylinders. Here's what disklabel shows for the
> [...]
> If I partition based on 16383 cylinders, I've only used eight gigs of the
> disk. If I partition based on 26520480 sectors, I use the whole disk, but
> I see 26309 cylinders in use.
> 
> This disk was initially labelled with something like:
> 
> disklabel wd1 > foo
> disklabel -R wd1 foo
> 
> Can someone reeducate me? What am I missing here?

Welcome to PC world !
The PC BIOS (that is, the standart INT13 bios call interface) can't handle
more than 16383 cylinders (which puts the limit at 8G). Disks bigger than 8G
claims to have only 16383 cylinders for compatibility (newer bioses which
supports INT13 extentions uses LBA adressing, this so is not an issue).
As the OS uses LBA once booted it's not an issue either.

--
Manuel Bouyer, LIP6, Universite Paris VI.           Manuel.Bouyer@lip6.fr
--