Origin of "partition" in storage devices

[Peter Corlett]

On Mon, Jan 31, 2022 at 07:51:28PM -0500, Paul Koning via cctalk wrote:
[...]
> Yes, RT-11 is a somewhat unusual file system in that it doesn't just
> support contiguous files -- it supports ONLY contiguous files. That makes
> for a very small and very fast file system.

> The only other example I know of that does this is the PLATO file system.

The first such one I encountered was Acorn's DFS. "Very small" is relative:
the filesystem came on an 16kiB ROM and stole 2,816 precious bytes of RAM
for its workspace. When you already only had 28,160 bytes free after the OS
had taken its fill, that's quite an extra imposition.

Other filesystems like this are anything which is expected to be generated
from a master image and written out linearly to mostly read-only storage,
such as ISO 9660, UDF, embedded systems, "booter" games and demos, etc.