Rigby5
Diamond Member
“Wrong, you do not read clusters, you read sectors.”“You can likely find the file allocation table and start looking for sectors, but they have not been real physical sectors in many decades.”Great, then explain to the class why the brand matter when doing a byte-by-byte copy of one drive to another, assuming the storage capacity on the destination drive is at least as big as the source drive......Of course I do know more than anyone working at the FBI, who is not going to have nearly as much experience as I do.
I build computers over the decades from scratch. Not all aspects but most of them, and I have to know about all of them.
The FBI does not have to know much at all, and can't know very much because you can't learn this stuff while working at the FBI.
I have built mainframes, minis, personal computers and smart devices.
I do operating systems, firmware, embedded systems, network protocols, pacemakers, etc.
The reason the brand and version of the drive matter is that the mapping of virtual to physical sectors of the drive are dependent upon the embedded firmware scheme. You can likely find the file allocation table and start looking for sectors, but they have not been real physical sectors in many decades. The reasons for this include the ability to map out bad sectors, allow encryption, to allow RAID sort of distribution of sectors so that you can read the next sector off a different platter at the same time you read the previous sector, etc. Sectors used to originally be physical and sequential, but now are virtual and can be distributed for faster access vertically instead of sequentially. It all depends on brand, version, etc. Harddrives have their own processors and complex cache schemes. You would have to reverse engineer the entire scheme in order to read from RAW bytes. You could do that 30 years ago, but not any more.
Thanks again for demonstrating for the forum that you don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about.
File allocation tables look at clusters, not sectors...
A sector is a fixed division of a track on a disk. And A cluster is a group of contiguous sectors and basic unit for FAT32 files. The FAT tables in FAT32 provide information about used clusters, reserved clusters, and free clusters. All clusters allocated for a file is organized by FAT tables in a linked list manner .
Wrong, you do not read clusters, you read sectors. Sure a cluster is a group of sectors and is how you find the sectors, but is it sectors you read.
Clusters exist as a way of avoiding the sector details in the file table system.
And FAT32 is not only somewhat obsolete, but only 1 of many different allocation table system.
For example, the UEFI boot system uses the GUID Partition table instead of a FAT table.
Windows uses NTFS by default.
Linux uses Ext, Ext2, Ext3, Ext4, JFS, XFS, btrfs and swap.
I deliberately avoided referencing clusters since they are not universal to all file systems, and mean nothing at all to the drives.
I doubt the DNC servers were using FAT32.
Now you’re lying about what I said. I said nothing about how data is read. I said file allocation tables index by clusters, not sectors. I even posted a link describing how a file allocation table uses clusters.
“Sure a cluster is a group of sectors and is how you find the sectors”
LOLOL
Yeah, you say that now, now that your ignorance in the subject was exposed. But earlier, you were talking about file allocation tables and sectors.
Linux uses Ext, Ext2, Ext3, Ext4, JFS, XFS, btrfs and swap.
Swap is not a file system. It’s a partition used to extend memory by storing raw memory and doesn’t even rely on a file allocation table.
And for shareability, Linux also supports NTFS and various flavors of FAT, which rely on clusters to find files.
You do not understand file allocation tables.
Clusters are NOT used to access the hard drive.
Clusters are just used to indicate file length, in a rounded up group size, to provide for easier caching.
Cluster size is only used to tell you how much free space you still have.
It is not how you get to the data on the drive.
And FAT32 has been obsolete since Windows NT.
The reason only sectors matter, is because sector became virtual about 20 years ago.
They are no longer physical, so are not sequential any more.
So you have to look up each one in order to find out where each virtual sector is mapped to a physical sector.
And yes, Swap IS a file system. When memory pages need to be put off on the drive, it uses a special swap file system. It is not the same file system the user is using. Swap files have their own file system.
I have never used NTFS or any flavor of FAT on Linux, but that does not mean they don't.
The fact you can do a dual boot suggest it may be reasonable.
But it hardly matters since the important point is that hard drives are accessed by sectors, which are virtual these days.
You don't seen cluster read requests to the hard drive, you sent sector reads.