Talk:Logical block addressing

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[edit] Ambiguity in ATA maxes, seek advice

Before I took a stab at clarifying the ATA stuff, the article read:

...limited to 1024/4096/16384, 16/256 and 63 respectively. Original limits were 1024*16*63, but newer BIOSes can transform a coordinate system with more than 16 (virtual) disk heads into one which has more cylinders instead, or they can transform CHS coordinates in a coordinate system of up to 1024*255*63 size...

This isn't really very clear, as it doesn't say what the circumstances were when 1024/4096/16384 was the max and when 1024/255/63 was. We should present all the different eras and their corresponding maxes, hopefully with max volume size calculations for each. -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 23:03, 22 September 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Ignore BIOS Geometry

If Linux (and others) do not use BIOS geometry to determine hard disk size, what does it use? Can we provide an explanation of the alternative scheme?

--64.173.240.130 (talk) 20:49, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

I'll attempt to do so at a later date. Essentially they communicate with the hard disks using ATA commands themselves, which is how they can ignore the BIOS code. Daniel B. Sedory (talk) 14:58, 20 March 2008 (UTC)