Accessing partitions in drive images

[Joshua Judson Rosen]

Ben Scott <dragonhawk at gmail.com> writes:
>
> On Thu, Jan 26, 2012 at 10:08 AM, Michael ODonnell
> <michael.odonnell at comcast.net> wrote:
> > most filesystems do normally reside on partitions
> > but that's not actually inherent in the design of the system ...
> 
>   Not inherent in the design of *nix systems, certainly.  Or computers
> in general.  But in the original IBM pee sea fixed disks specs, fixed
> disks have a partition table.  A disk which lacks such is something of
> an anomaly.  This doesn't matter if you're only playing in the *nix
> playground, but if you start mixing in other OSes, or even stand-alone
> diagnostics, things can get ugly.  Something to keep in mind.

I've always wondered: why do the little USB flash sticks,
SD cards, etc. all include a partition-table with one
partition? Why don't they just use whole-device filesystems?

-- 
"Don't be afraid to ask (λf.((λx.xx) (λr.f(rr))))."