evans@ditsyda.oz (Bruce Evans) (10/05/89)
In article <15466@bcsaic.UUCP> paula@bcsaic.UUCP (Paul Allen) writes: >I had *lots* of trouble when I was using the fdisk from DOS 3.30. >I fixed the Minix fdisk and switched to DOS 3.10 at the same time, DOS 3.3 orders partitions starting from the first entry, the same order as Minix, while DOS 3.2 did the opposite. DOS 3.3 fdisk always gave me trouble in combination with Minix fdisk. I used to use one or both fdisks to set up partitions, then edit the magic number in partition table by hand. DOS 3.3 uses a new magic number (5) for extended DOS partions, and I used this for Minix partitions too, since DOS 3.3 fdisk crashed on the Minix (non-)magic number of 0. DON'T do this, because deleting the DOS partition using DOS fdisk deletes the Minix partition too *and* writes on it. The correct solution is to use a new magic number for Minix partitions. I used 8, again entered by hand. Who maintains the magic number list? :-) DOS uses 1 and 4 at least, then there are Xenix, OS/2, SysV ... -- Bruce Evans evans@ditsyda.oz.au
cs304pal@rata.vuw.ac.nz (Lloyd Parkes) (10/10/89)
In article <2246@ditsyda.oz> evans@ditsyda.oz (Bruce Evans) writes: >>I had *lots* of trouble when I was using the fdisk from DOS 3.30. >Minix, while DOS 3.2 did the opposite. DOS 3.3 fdisk always gave me trouble MSDOS's fdisk is an abomination, it insists on deleting any partitions with a system id of zero. I can't find any reference that actually says zero signifies a null partition. If I must use DOS's fdisk, I use Norton's Utilities (probably tm, reg, pat pen etc) to change the system id to Xenix :-). It's typical of DOS, I have to lie to it, to get it to do anything useful. Lloyd Quick, send your money to cs304pal@rata.vuw.ac.nz now! If you think anyone believes what I have just said, then you must be daft in the head!