cfdisk vs fdisk & speaking of Western Digital drives...

[Andy Firman <andy@firman.us>]

Hello.  I am not a hard drive expert and need some help in 
understanding a few things.

First, what is the difference between fdisk and cfdisk,
other cfdisk being curses based?

Second, I have 2 Western Digital drives.
Both model WD400BB but they were manufactured about
6 months apart.  I just bought the second one as I want
to try out Lucas' new Debian software Root on Raid howto.

I partioned both disk's exactly the same using cfdisk 
during the install.  It seems that one drive has 4863 cylinders
and the other has 77545 cylinders.  Why would Western Digital
make the drives different?  Or did I do something wrong 
with partitioning/formatting?

Do the physical drives and partitions have to be EXACTLY the 
same for RAID 1 to work properly or will the following
layouts of my drives be sufficient?

Here is the info from cfdisk and fdisk on both drives:  


cfdisk /dev/hda:


                               cfdisk 2.11n

                           Disk Drive: /dev/hda
                          Size: 40000000000 bytes
           Heads: 255   Sectors per Track: 63   Cylinders: 4863

   Name    Flags   Part Type FS Type   [Label] Size (MB)

-------------------------------------------------------------------------
   hda1        Boot       Primary  Linux ext2  1003.49
   hda2                   Primary  Linux ext2  3002.23
   hda3                   Primary  Linux ext2  3002.23
   hda5                   Logical  Linux swap  1003.49
   hda6                   Logical  Linux ext2  3002.23
                          Logical  Free Space  28985.89


then 

cfdisk /dev/hdd
                               cfdisk 2.11n

                           Disk Drive: /dev/hdd
                          Size: 40020664320 bytes
           Heads: 16   Sectors per Track: 63   Cylinders: 77545

   Name  Flags  Part Type FS Type  [Label]  Size (MB)

-------------------------------------------------------------------------
   hdd1        Boot       Primary  Linux ext2  1000.20
   hdd2                   Primary  Linux ext2  3000.07
   hdd3                   Primary  Linux ext2  3000.07
   hdd5                   Logical  Linux swap  1000.20
   hdd6                   Logical  Linux ext2  3000.07
                          Logical  Free Space  29020.08

Now for fdisk:

fdisk /dev/hda
Command (m for help): p

Disk /dev/hda: 255 heads, 63 sectors, 4863 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 bytes

   Device Boot    Start       End    Blocks   Id  System
/dev/hda1   *         1       122    979933+  83  Linux
/dev/hda2           123       487   2931862+  83  Linux
/dev/hda3           488       852   2931862+  83  Linux
/dev/hda4           853      1339   3911827+   5  Extended
/dev/hda5           853       974    979933+  82  Linux swap
/dev/hda6           975      1339   2931831   83  Linux

fdisk /dev/hdd
Command (m for help): p

Disk /dev/hdd: 16 heads, 63 sectors, 77545 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 1008 * 512 bytes

   Device Boot    Start       End    Blocks   Id  System
/dev/hdd1   *         1      1938    976720+  83  Linux
/dev/hdd2          1939      7751   2929752   83  Linux
/dev/hdd3          7752     13564   2929752   83  Linux
/dev/hdd4         13565     21315   3906504    5  Extended
/dev/hdd5         13565     15502    976720+  82  Linux swap
/dev/hdd6         15503     21315   2929720+  83  Linux


Thanks for any help.

-Andy