FreeLists / haiku-development / [haiku-development] Re: Available spaces on partitions

[Bruno Albuquerque <bga@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Stephan Assmus escreveu:

> I would like to get some feedback on a question regarding available spaces 
> on partitions that are smaller than a certain "threshold". I think these 
> spaces appear because of positioning restrictions for partitions with 
> certain hard drive layouts and properties. I don't know enough about it, 
> but I have encountered these "unavailable for partitions" spaces anytime I 
> have dealt with partitioning tools, especially when installing Windows. For 
> example, I would create one big partition to cover the entire drive, and 
> after doing so, there would be 8 MB of empty space left besides the new 
> partition -> Huh? My questions are, I guess, 1) wether this is really 
> unavoidable because of some placement restrictions. 2) wether to show these 
> to the user at all (I guess not). And 3) if there is any more reliable way 
> to detect a "bogus space" other than looking at it's size and, say, ignore 
> anything below or at 8 MByte. Maybe with even bigger drives, these spaces 
> could be more than 8 MByte. Like I said, I don't know enough about the 
> subject, any feedback appreciated.
There is no way to avoid this wasted space. I am not really sure why but 
I guess it is related to rounding to cilinders. I guess for the usual 
user not showing this space is better but an option to show it could be 
usefull for an advanced user. And I am not sure what is the best way to 
detect when the space is unusable. I know that if you try to create a 
partition there, it fails.
-Bruno