There's been some talk here recently about partitions versus cylinder boundaries, and when or even if they need to line up properly.
I'm confused. For many years now I've ignored "cylinders" completely because I've read that modern disks are addressed by sector number only, and disks don't know or care about cylinders. The "cylinder" seems to be a fiction that sticks around like a drunk who refuses to leave when the party is over. The recent thread about the new disks with 1024-byte sectors has me even more confused. IIUC the new disks *do* care (at least) about where a partition begins relative to it's own 1024-byte hardware sectors, and that part makes perfect sense. But, to me, that still leaves the "cylinder" as a completely useless fiction that needs to join MSDOS in the scrap heap of history. Am I right to separate the 1024-byte sector problem from "cylinders" as being two entirely different and orthogonal ideas? Is there really any need for the "cylinder" these days? Happy Friday :)
