Re: partitioning and use thereof

On 10/6/21 8:19 PM, Robert Baer wrote:
> OK, the way HDs have been set up is extremely wasteful, one giant 
> track and sector.

Please define what you mean by "one giant track and sector".  *ALL* of 
the hard drives that I've used for the past 30 years, and I do mean 
/all/, have had many tracks, with each track having many sectors therein.

> All else there off to the sunset forever.

And yet we have many different partitioning schemes.  So it seems to me 
that the first thing used wasn't /forever/.

> Seems to me, in the old daze where space was supposedly at a premium, 
> that non-use would have been accounted for.

The slack space at the end of the files verses the allocation that they 
consumed has been a form of contention for the entire time that I've 
been using hard drives.  That's where cluster sizes comes into play with 
file systems.

> Well, as a result we have (at least i do not have to take off my 
> shoes to count) 4 (four) partitions.

What is a partition?

  - primary
  - logical
  - BSD disk slice
  - Microsoft dynamic
  - Logical Volume
  - something else

> Then these new(er) OSes go and WASTE one by eating a partition for 
> the very space-wasting boot sector...more space non-use.

I suppose that you're talking about Microsoft OSes.  I can still install 
contemporary Linux in a single partition with the boot loader living in 
the unused space of the first sector that is not included in a partition.

> And they go-ahead and byte all over attempts to (independently) make 
> 4 partitions.

I think your attempts are significantly different than my ... successes.

> So, for arguments sake, i would like to put on the hard drive DOS, 
> Linux, Win7 and Win10.

DOS will almost certainly need it's own partition.

Linux will almost certainly need it's own partition.

Windows 7 and Windows 10 may be able to be installed in the same common 
partition.  I've done so with Windows NT 4.0, Windows 2000, and Windows 
XP in the past.  --  I'm sure it's contrary to Microsoft's 
recommendations.  But that doesn't mean that it's not possible.

> And since i am starting with 4 drives i would naively partition an 
> empty drive into 4 partitions, and just copy each drive onto a partition 
> and use a partition manager to select and boot where i want.

/Partition/ managers and /boot/ managers are distinctly *different* 
things.  They frequently come as a bundle, but they are quite different 
things.  The former is meant for altering partition tables.  The latter 
is meant to allow you to boot different OSs.  Sometimes the latter only 
automates altering the active partition.  Usually the latter is in and 
of itself a micro OS that presents you with a menu to choose what OS you 
want to chain load.

> Comments?

There is a lot of minutia in what you are talking about.  Some minutia 
is compatible with other minutia, and some is incompatible.



-- 
Grant. . . .
unix || die