[parted-devel] [PATCH] cylinder boundries in msdos

[H. Peter Anvin]

Joel Granados Moreno wrote:
> Hello parted ppl.
> 
> I have been playing with an idea and will like to share what could be a
> potential benefit to parted.  Everything starts with a question:
> Why the hell do we align to cylinder boundaries in msdos partitions?  I
> mean, how old is this, 30 years old.

Why?  Because early versions of MS-DOS couldn't load IO.SYS if the first
couple of sectors crossed a track boundary.  That, plus it was a way to
improve performance back when tracks actually meant something.

Note that there is a lot of braindead software, including Grub2, which
makes assumptions that the first N sectors after the MBR are free.

These days we should align to a large enough power of two, 32K minimum.

	-hpa

-- 
H. Peter Anvin, Intel Open Source Technology Center
I work for Intel.  I don't speak on their behalf.