[ale] HELP!!! /HDA DISASTER!

[jeff hubbs]

Kevin Krumwiede wrote:

> I think you're thinking of the 2GB partition limit, which was a limitation
> of FAT16.  FAT32 supports up to 2TB.
> 
> I don't know why M$ fdisk is incompatible with everyone else's.  It would be
> easy to explain it away as another case of M$ deliberately introducing
> incompatibilities into its products, but since FAT is one of the few things
> M$ actually invented... I dunno...
> 
> Krum

If you do "man fdisk" there is a procedure to follow when dealing with 
Windows/DOS partitions:

DOS 6.x WARNING
        The DOS 6.x FORMAT command looks for some information in the 
first  sector  of  the
        data  area  of  the partition, and treats this information as 
more reliable than the
        information in the partition table.  DOS FORMAT expects DOS 
FDISK to clear the first
        512 bytes of the data area of a partition whenever a size change 
occurs.  DOS FORMAT
        will look at this extra information even if the /U flag is given 
-- we consider this
        a bug in DOS FORMAT and DOS FDISK.

        The  bottom line is that if you use cfdisk or fdisk to change 
the size of a DOS par­
        tition table entry, then you must also use dd to zero the first 
512  bytes  of  that
        partition before using DOS FORMAT to format the partition.  For 
example, if you were
        using cfdisk to make a DOS partition table entry for /dev/hda1, 
then (after  exiting
        fdisk  or  cfdisk  and  rebooting  Linux  so that the partition 
table information is
        valid) you would use the command "dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/hda1 
bs=512  count=1"  to
        zero the first 512 bytes of the partition.

- Jeff


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