On Thu, 5 Nov 2009 21:32:59 +0100 Joachim Schipper <joac...@joachimschipper.nl> wrote:
> On Thu, Nov 05, 2009 at 12:14:15PM -0500, Ted Unangst wrote: > > On Thu, Nov 5, 2009 at 10:28 AM, Joachim Schipper > > <joac...@joachimschipper.nl> wrote: > > > This seems predicated on the firmware being smart enough to swap > > > out bad sectors for good setors that are addressable but not used > > > in practice. Is the firmware that smart? (I know about > > > wear-levelling and swapping in "reserve" sectors, but that's > > > different - those *cannot* be addressed.) > > > > There are no reserve sectors, there's just sectors. Some of them > > are reserved, but they're no different from the normal sectors. > > > > Think of it like a 6GB machine running PAE (and only one process). > > You can only address 4GB at maximum, but if something goes bad, > > there's other memory your virtual addresses can get mapped to. If > > you are only writing to 1GB of space though, it's easily spread out > > over all 6GB. The high 2GB is not special or different. > > I was going to send a "you misunderstood my point" message, but you > are right about the "no special sectors" part, and I knew better. > Thanks for the correction! > > Still, the point I was trying to make - that leaving part of your disk > unpartitioned doesn't really help - stands, no? > > Joachim It makes no difference if the "free space" is kept free by not partioning it or simply not using all of the partitioned space. - Robert
