Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!bonnie.concordia.ca!uunet!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!think.com!cass.ma02.bull.com!mips2!bull.bull.fr!lvbull.lv.bull.fr!newlvbul!Patrick.Hayes From: Patrick.Hayes@cediag.bull.fr (Patrick Hayes) Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.hardware Subject: Re: Minor Hard Disk Question... Message-ID: Date: 3 Jun 91 15:00:45 GMT References: <54870@nigel.ee.udel.edu> Sender: news@lvbull.lv.bull.fr Organization: Cediag Bull S.A., Louveciennes, France Lines: 36 Nntp-Posting-Host: 129.181.128.201 In-reply-to: johnston@oscar.ccm.udel.edu's message of 28 May 91 21:19:26 GMT In article <54870@nigel.ee.udel.edu> johnston@oscar.ccm.udel.edu writes: >If one clicks Partition -> Custom -> Details, you'll see that the >grey area is titled "Apple Free". The size is about 900 K on a >40 meg drive. > >My question: does anyone know what is the purpose of setting aside >this space? Is there any reason why one would NOT want to create >a larger than default partition? Yes, I do. There are a few reasons. In no particular order: - It's not often that you can find two hard disk drives with exactly the same capacity because of the differing number of bad blocks. - To make all the disks from different sources (and thus having minor differences in capacity) look the same. - Who out there remembers the Apple 40 Mb tape drive? The backup software from Apple was unable to restore to a volume having a different size than the one from which the backup was done. Blocking the partition size at exactly 40Mb for all apple 40 Mb drives meant that you could backup and restore between them indiscriminately. Using every last sector could put you in the nasty situation of not being to restore to a new drive if the old one crashed... - Apple sells 40Mb drives, not 40.341516... Mb drives. Any extra you may find is just that, extra, but Apple will not, indeed cannot garentee that. What with everyone becoming explicit on demanding exactly what Apple advertises (32bit roms, et al), this becomes a valid choice. Pat -- +-------------------------------+-----------------------------------------+ | Patrick Hayes | EMail : Patrick.Hayes@cediag.bull.fr | | BULL CEDIAG | or hayes@bull.fr | | 68, Route de Versailles | Tel : (33 1) 39 02 56 88 | | F-78430 Louveciennes FRANCE | Fax : (33 1) 39 02 47 95 | +-------------------------------+-----------------------------------------+