Origin of "partition" in storage devices

[Kenneth Gober]

On Mon, Jan 31, 2022 at 4:43 PM Noel Chiappa via cctalk <
cctalk at classiccmp.org> wrote:

>     > From: Paul Koning
>
>     > When did Unix first get partitions?
>
> 'Partitions' the mechanism, or partitions the term for the mechanism?
>
> The former appeared about V5:
>
>   https://minnie.tuhs.org/cgi-bin/utree.pl?file=V5/usr/sys/dmr/rp.c
>
> when an RP03 was added; pre-V7, UNIX filesystems were limited to 2^16
> blocks,
> so the 406*10*20 blocks of an RP03 had to be split up into partitions
> (called
> 'sections' or 'pseudo-disks' in the documentation) to make all of it
> useable.
>
> The latter? No idea...
>

In the Unix V5 rp(4) man page the term "sections" is used.  See page 222 of
https://www.tuhs.org/Archive/Distributions/Research/Dennis_v5/v5man.pdf

In "Setting Up Unix - Sixth Edition" the term "partitions" is used,
although the rp(4) man page still used "sections" in V6 and V7.  See
https://www.tuhs.org/cgi-bin/utree.pl?file=V6/usr/doc/start/start

-ken