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On Wed, 2005-10-19 at 09:28 -0700, maxim wexler wrote: |
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> |
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> I wonder if there isn't a tiny part of the drive that |
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> comes before the first partition, like those first few |
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> grooves on a vinyl record ;-) |
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|
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There is. You can reset it by using fdisk /mbr (from the Microsoft |
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Windows boot disk). Or you can try using cfdisk as described below. |
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|
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man cfdisk |
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|
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DOS 6.x WARNING |
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The DOS 6.x FORMAT command looks for some information in the |
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first sector of the data area of the partition, and treats this |
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information as more reliable than the information in the partition |
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table. DOS FORMAT expects DOS FDISK to clear the first 512 bytes of the |
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data area of a partition whenever a size change occurs. DOS FORMAT will |
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look at this extra information even if the /U flag is given -- we |
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consider this a bug in DOS FORMAT and DOS FDISK. |
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|
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The bottom line is that if you use cfdisk or fdisk to change the |
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size of a DOS partition table entry, then you must also use dd to zero |
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the first 512 bytes of that par-tition before using DOS FORMAT to |
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format the partition. For example, if you were using cfdisk to make a |
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DOS partition table entry for /dev/hda1, then (after exiting fdisk or |
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cfdisk and rebooting Linux so that the partition table information is |
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valid) you would use the command "dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/hda1 bs=512 |
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count=1" to zero the first 512 bytes of the partition. Note: |
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|
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BE EXTREMELY CAREFUL if you use the dd command, since a small |
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typo can make all of the data on your disk useless. |
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|
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-- |
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Scott Tiret <stiret@××××××××××.net> |