HD(4)                     Linux Programmer's Manual                    HD(4)

NAME         top

       hd - MFM/IDE hard disk devices

DESCRIPTION         top

       The hd* devices are block devices to access MFM/IDE hard disk drives
       in raw mode.  The master drive on the primary IDE controller (major
       device number 3) is hda; the slave drive is hdb.  The master drive of
       the second controller (major device number 22) is hdc and the slave
       is hdd.

       General IDE block device names have the form hdX, or hdXP, where X is
       a letter denoting the physical drive, and P is a number denoting the
       partition on that physical drive.  The first form, hdX, is used to
       address the whole drive.  Partition numbers are assigned in the order
       the partitions are discovered, and only nonempty, nonextended
       partitions get a number.  However, partition numbers 1–4 are given to
       the four partitions described in the MBR (the "primary" partitions),
       regardless of whether they are unused or extended.  Thus, the first
       logical partition will be hdX5.  Both DOS-type partitioning and BSD-
       disklabel partitioning are supported.  You can have at most 63
       partitions on an IDE disk.

       For example, /dev/hda refers to all of the first IDE drive in the
       system; and /dev/hdb3 refers to the third DOS "primary" partition on
       the second one.

       They are typically created by:

           mknod -m 660 /dev/hda b 3 0
           mknod -m 660 /dev/hda1 b 3 1
           mknod -m 660 /dev/hda2 b 3 2
           ...
           mknod -m 660 /dev/hda8 b 3 8
           mknod -m 660 /dev/hdb b 3 64
           mknod -m 660 /dev/hdb1 b 3 65
           mknod -m 660 /dev/hdb2 b 3 66
           ...
           mknod -m 660 /dev/hdb8 b 3 72
           chown root:disk /dev/hd*

FILES         top

       /dev/hd*

SEE ALSO         top

       chown(1), mknod(1), sd(4), mount(8)

COLOPHON         top

       This page is part of release 4.15 of the Linux man-pages project.  A
       description of the project, information about reporting bugs, and the
       latest version of this page, can be found at
       https://www.kernel.org/doc/man-pages/.

Linux                            2017-09-15                            HD(4)

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