[gentoo-user] Who believes in cylinders?

[walt <w41ter@gmail.com>]

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 :)