Final Year Project:
Using Linux Filesystems Under Windows
Chris Bryden
BEng. Electronics and Software Engineering
School of Computer Science
University of Birmingham
5
Within a partition the individual sectors are located by a single number,
known as the logical sector number. The CHS reference could still be used, but
the single figure is easier to handle. The numbering starts form zero with the first
sector of the partition, this sector is known as the boot sector of the partition as
it contains a small piece of code used to start the operating system.
Logical sector numbers are obtained by numbering each sector
sequentially starting from track 0, head 0, sector 1 (logical sector 0) of the
partition and continuing along the same head, then to the next head until the last
sector on the last head of the track is counted. Thus, logical sector 1 is track 0,
head 0, sector 2; logical sector 2 is track 0, head 0, sector 3; and so on.
Numbering then continues with sector 1 on head 0 of the next track.
Converting the logical sector number of a partition to an absolute CHS
reference is a two stage process, firstly the offset of the start of the partition
(start_sect) has to be added to the logical sector number, this gives an absolute
logical sector number. This number is then converted to a CHS reference. As
explained in the previous section, the sector can now be read from disk.