ML> Available-space discussions make sense only when one remembers
 ML> that they are purely relative.  You really ought to understand that 8
 ML> MB is only 0.1% of an 8 GB drive (0.2% of a 4 GB drive, in case
 ML> arithmetic is difficult for you), so is in the noise as far as usable 
 ML> space on such drives is concerned.   One tenth of one percent isn't 
 ML> worth worrying about, let alone making a serious(?) suggestion that 
 ML> legacy drive usage be modified to "save" any part of it.

The suggestion that the cylinder alignment restriction in FDISK be limited was 
motivated by many years of seeing many people complain in this and other fora
that "Boot Manager consumes a whole 8MeB!  Utility X only consumes a couple of 
sectors.  Boot Manager is rubbish!".  Obviously, people *are* concerned by
such things -- quite a few people going by the number of times that I have
seen this sentiment expressed.  Indeed, having myself worked for many years
with a machine whose hard disc was continually around the 98% full mark, I can 
assure you that people *do* think that one tenth of one percent matters.

There were other reasons for suggesting it, as well.  As Will Honea pointed
out, this limitation doesn't seem to have any actual reason for existing. 
Unaligned partitions don't appear to cause any problem for PC/MS-DOS in
practice, which is the only operating system where one would expect such
problems to appear.  Removing the limitation would also eliminate the
favourite hiding area used by MBR viruses: the unused sectors between the
primary MBR and the start of the first partition on the next track.

 ¯ JdeBP ®

--- FleetStreet 1.22 NR
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