home *** CD-ROM | disk | FTP | other *** search
- Path: fc.hp.com!tomk
- From: tomk@fc.hp.com (Tom Kennedy)
- Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.hardware
- Subject: Re: Zip Drive Geometry
- Date: 6 Mar 1996 21:25:35 GMT
- Organization: Hewlett-Packard Fort Collins Site
- Message-ID: <4hkvsf$cr3@fcnews.fc.hp.com>
- References: <19960223.7CF2F28.90E7@ccubb.com> <4glcie$b66@fcnews.fc.hp.com> <tdenboDnr72L.A02@netcom.com> <1181.6638T994T2905@xmission.com> <4hip5u$fco@hearst.cac.psu.edu>
- NNTP-Posting-Host: magnum.fc.hp.com
- X-Newsreader: TIN [version 1.2 PL1.4]
-
- The Prophet (jbk4@email.psu.edu) wrote:
-
- : > TD> Tom Kennedy (tomk@fc.hp.com) wrote:
- : > TD>: It's got 196608 sectors. You can pick any geometry that has that
- : > TD>: number of sectors. (I use 8 sec/track, 2 heads, 12288 tracks.)
- ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
- Oops... I just realized that this is wrong :)
-
- I use 8 sec/track, 1 head, 24576 tracks. This way a cylinder is 8
- sectors (I wanted cylinder size small to keep the RDB small), and the
- # of tracks is less then 32768 (HDToolBox barfs on the "partition"
- screen if the number of cylinders is > 32768).
-
- : Could someone explain all the various options contained in a mountlist?
- : For example, what's the difference between 1, 2, 4, etc heads when you
- : define your mountlist? Is there an advantage to more or fewer?
-
- It doesn't really matter. Just remember that
- (sectors per track) * heads = (sectors per cylinder).
-
- In general, the only important thing is to pick a geometry that is
- exactly the same size as the disk (in sectors) so that you don't waste
- any. You may also want to keep the number of sectors per cylinder
- reletively small, so that you don't waste too much space on the RDB.
- (On a 1 GB hard drive, the RDB could end up being over a meg if you're
- not careful...) Of course, some people don't care about wasting >1%
- of their hard drive. (It's not really a big deal, but I usually like
- to get the biggest bang for my buck...)
-
- There might be some advantage to picking a number of heads equal to
- the actual drive geometry... but you'd probably never notice.
-
- Tom Kennedy
-