NAME

       hd - MFM/IDE hard disk devices

DESCRIPTION

       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

       /dev/hd*

SEE ALSO

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

COLOPHON

       This page is part of release 4.04 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 http://www.kernel.org/doc/man-pages/.