On Thu, Sep 11, 2003 at 10:58:54PM +0200, Carel Fellinger wrote: > On Wed, Sep 10, 2003 at 11:28:24PM +0100, Pigeon wrote: > > On Wed, Sep 10, 2003 at 10:30:06PM +0200, Carel Fellinger wrote: > > > But nowadays I think that what's really needed is to take care that all > > > windows partitions have there first sector(s?) cleaned prior to letting > > > windows format those, as it seems that windows prefers the partitioning > ,,, > > This is true. This is one reason why it is better to use DOS FDISK to > > create DOS/Windoze partitions - it wipes the first sector when you > > create the partition. > > True as this might be, it has the severe disadvantage of being stuck > with DOS FDISK. Maybe it's just my ignorance on windows things but > somehow DOS FDISK always managed to ruin my carefull layed out > partitioning. Especially trying to change a partition table > afterwards proved to be troublsome.
Well, the other thing about DOS FDISK is that it understands all the nasty futzery between DOS and the BIOS and CHS translation. This enables it to avoid problems like the MS bootloader not being able to find the first sector of the partition, or the MS OS writing to areas outside its partition, which can occur when using cfdisk to create MS partitions on a blank (as in dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/hdx bs=512 count=1) hard drive. It seems that once a partition table has been created with DOS FDISK, Linux cfdisk and its kin are smart enough to realise what's happened (though some give strange warnings) and create their own partition table entries along the same pattern. The safest method for a mixed-OS drive seems to be to create the basic structure with DOS FDISK, then tweak it and fill in the gaps with cfdisk. This is undeniably awkward; the procedure I described earlier is an example of following this principle as rigorously as possible. I do always compile my kernels with CONFIG_PARTITION_ADVANCED=y and CONFIG_MSDOS_PARTITION=y; I don't know if the stock Debian kernels have these set, nor have I tried it without to see if disaster ensues. :-) -- Pigeon Be kind to pigeons Get my GPG key here: http://pgp.mit.edu:11371/pks/lookup?op=get&search=0x21C61F7F
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