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From: billm@hpnmdla.HP.COM (Bill Marlin)
Newsgroups: comp.os.minix
Subject: Re: PC HD partition boundaries for Minix
Message-ID: <610009@hpnmdla.HP.COM>
Date: 2 May 90 03:54:54 GMT
References: <380@trux.UUCP>
Organization: HP Network Measurements Div, Santa Rosa, CA
Lines: 29

> / hpnmdla:comp.os.minix / kjh@pollux.usc.edu (Kenneth J. Hendrickson) /  9:35 pm  Apr 30, 1990 /
> In article <610008@hpnmdla.HP.COM> billm@hpnmdla.HP.COM (Bill Marlin) writes:
> >In the USER-GUIDE it says that all partitions should have an even
> >number of cylinders, even MSDOS partitions.
> 
> How is this possible if your disk has an odd number of cylinders?  In my
> case, a Seagate 4096, there are 1023 cylinders, numbered from 0 to 1022.
> At least one partition must have an odd number of cylinders.
 
If you wanted to make equal size partitions you would divide the total
number of cylinders by the number of partitions. For example if you wanted
to make one DOS and one Minix partition divide 1023 by 2 = 511.5. Since
you want an even number of whole cylinders, make each partition 510 cylinders
and waste three cylinders at the end of the disk. The split does not have
to be equal. It depends on how much space you want to devote to DOS, Minix,
etc.

If you do make 510 cylinder partitions, and make partition 1 an active
DOS partition, mkfs /dev/hd2 17340   
   (510 cylinders x 34 = 17340 blocks)

> Which one should it be?  A DOS partition?  A Minix partition?  Which DOS
> partition?  Which Minix partition?

If you made the first partition a DOS partition, you can then boot DOS
from the hard disk without a floppy, and boot Minix with a floppy.

> Ken Hendrickson N8DGN/6      kjh@usc.edu      ...!uunet!usc!pollux!kjh
> ----------