Path: csiph.com!fu-berlin.de!uni-berlin.de!individual.net!not-for-mail From: rbowman Newsgroups: comp.os.linux.misc Subject: Re: Linux needs less fragmentation Date: 6 Oct 2026 14:39:10 GMT Lines: 22 Message-ID: References: <6abfe3d3$0$26$882e4bbb@reader.netnews.com> <6abfe73a$0$27$882e4bbb@reader.netnews.com> <119phti$2j9hl$1@dont-email.me> <6ac0ee93$0$25$882e4bbb@reader.netnews.com> <119t7c7$3pgbq$1@dont-email.me> <119uf8l$9egg$1@dont-email.me> <119vn39$mtek$13@dont-email.me> <11a0ruk$17kui$2@dont-email.me> <11a0sk2$179lq$6@dont-email.me> <11a10m8$19j2v$1@dont-email.me> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit X-Trace: individual.net WWqG4qwjycp2sTLh9IC2AwRk7v47+koNzZjLupfAWhav5FBgTv Cancel-Lock: sha1:988PqChBhuodyKu47wLp7CSD1lw= sha256:IpY1G98wLdr0RkcU5CHH0ckNAjgRTPZq6nUaf9NxDSE= User-Agent: Pan/0.165 (Kostiantynivka) Xref: csiph.com comp.os.linux.misc:93045 On Tue, 06 Oct 2026 08:34:03 +0100, Richard Kettlewell wrote: > Sectors are an abstraction on hard disks too, although granted > historically things like track numbers did get exposed outside the > device. > But it’s useful to have a uniform abstraction for accessing storage > devices, papering over the differences between the underlying > technologies, in the same way as we have one for accessing networks > which let you run the same applications unmodified regardless of the > underlying technology. Ah, the good old days of floppy sectors. The system couldn't necessarily handle more than 1 sector's worth of data at a time. To avoid waiting for one revolution to read the next adjacent sector, the sectors were interleaved so the next logical sector would be further along on the track. The Western Digital floppy control could be programmed with many options. Companies had different ideas of the best solution so CP/M floppies wound up with about a dozen different formats. That went back to drum storage but drums weren't passed around like CP/M floppies so you didn't need an utility to read a foreign formant.