Re: Disk Geometries reported incorrectly on 2.6.0-testX

From: Andrew Clausen <clausen@gnu.org>
To: Szakacsits Szabolcs <szaka@sienet.hu>
Cc: Andries Brouwer <aebr@win.tue.nl>, Apurva Mehta <apurva@gmx.net>,
	Linux Kernel Mailing List <linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org>,
	bug-parted@gnu.org
Subject: Re: Disk Geometries reported incorrectly on 2.6.0-testX
Date: Sun, 30 Nov 2003 09:33:50 +1100	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <20031129223349.GC505@gnu.org> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <Pine.LNX.4.58.0311290550190.21441@ua178d119.elisa.omakaista.fi>

On Sat, Nov 29, 2003 at 07:16:31AM +0200, Szakacsits Szabolcs wrote:
> > Yes there is.  "Correct" is defined by the BIOS.  It is important
> > for boot loaders (in particular Windows).  
> 
> I suspected the same ... What Windows you mean? DOS (9x/ME/etc) or NT based
> (NT4/2000/XP/2003)? All?

Good question.  From 98 up, Windows supports both LBA and CHS.  I'm not
sure about XP/2003.  The real question is: what is the default install?
How many users have each?

> Also, can Parted save/restore the full and exact partition table a
> scriptable way? I mean something like this:
> 
> 	sfdisk -d /dev/hda > hda.pt       # save
> 	sfdisk /dev/hda < hda.pt          # restore
> 
> sfdisk can't recover geometry so apparently no one-liner, widely available,
> partition table backup/recovery is possible at present on Linux :-o
> dd if=/dev/hda of=hda.mbr bs=512 count=1 won't save the logical partitions.

Parted can't do it.  :/

Cheers,
Andrew