sectorssupported

sectorssupported is a term used in storage and device descriptor contexts to denote the sectors or sector sizes that a device, interface, or driver can address or handle. It reflects the addressing granularity and range of the storage medium, and may indicate either the total number of addressable sectors or the set of sector sizes and alignments that are supported for I/O operations.

In practice, sectorssupported can appear as a numeric field, a bit field, or a descriptive value within hardware descriptors, firmware interfaces, or software APIs. It is commonly related to concepts such as logical block size (for example, 512-byte, 4K-byte sectors) and the maximum number of sectors that can be addressed in a single operation or by the device as a whole. The exact representation and interpretation of sectorssupported can vary between vendors, protocols, and operating environments.

The information conveyed by sectorssupported informs software and firmware decisions in the storage stack. It affects I/O sizing and alignment, the use of trim or unmap commands, caching strategies, and compatibility with file systems or virtualized storage. Correctly interpreting this parameter helps ensure optimal performance and correctness when performing low-level I/O, resizing disks, or migrating data across devices with different sector characteristics.

Common contexts include SATA/AHCI with 512e or 4Kn sector modes, NVMe logical block sizes, USB mass storage, and operating system storage subsystems. See also logical block size, sector, 4Kn, 512e, and LBA.