[  >...  The main
[  >incentive for doing this was so that the low level block access matched the  
[  >higher level file system allocation unit size.
[
[  I can only speak for me and my friends, but back then we reformatted the
[  Seagates with 1K sectors so that we could squeeze a couple more MB out of
[  the drive.

Ah yes, that would be a much more compelling incentive to use the software.   
My main incentive for creating the software was based on reading about the  
increased performance, but I was quite happy at the 10 GB to 20 GB gain (on my  
specific drives).



[  Actually, the Sun machines would only boot from CD-ROMs that were in
[  512 byte logical sector mode and the PROM wouldn't change the logical sector
[  size of the drive.  That's why you couldn't only use certain drives that
[  came up in 512 byte sector mode by default or by setting a jumper.

Thanks Chris.  My information on Sun is very limited.  I understand that I am  
one of a very small handful of people running NEXTSTEP on a SPARCstation (as  
opposed to OPENSTEP on Solaris).

I am surprised to hear about the CD-ROM, because I recall using the standard  
NeXT install CD, which is surely 2048 blocks.  Actually, I suppose all CD-ROM  
must be 2048 byte blocks per spec.  So you must be talking about the drive  
making the conversion.  That would mean that the Sun can only boot from 512  
byte block devices, and their CD-ROM drives (the one I am using is internal)  
handle the conversion in the SCSI firmware.

Thanks for filling in the info.  I spent hours (years ago) reformatting Sun  
drives with sdformat, only to find that I could not boot from those with 1024  
byte blocks.

Brian Willoughby
Sound Consulting