Messages in this thread | | | Date | Sat, 16 Jan 1999 01:27:32 +0100 (MET) | From | (Guest section DW) | Subject | Re: (un)corrupted ext2 partitions |
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From: Riley Williams <rhw@BigFoot.Com>
From what I've read, I gained the impression that there are in fact TWO ways that the partition tables in an extended partition can be used, but from Ted's comments above, that appears not to be the case. Could I ask somebody to straighten me out on this please, and tell me what I've got wrong...
1. An extended partition starts with its own partition table, which, like tha master partition table, has four entries.
Yes. Usually, only one or two are used.
2. The way MSDOS uses this partition table is to put the limits for a partition in the first entry, and then specify the rest of that extended partition as being ANOTHER extended partition in the fourth entry, with its own partition table at the beginning, and to repeat the process until all space is allocated.
Yes. Which two entries varies, but most common is the first two entries.
3. An alternative way to handle extended partitions, which both MSDOS and Win9x recognise, although neither creates, is to use multiple entries in the base partition table for up to three valid partitions (four if they fill the entire extended partition) before allocating another extended partition to deal with the rest of them.
Yes. (I assume your `base partition table' here is the first extended partition table.) Also OS/2 and Linux recognise this. Linux fdisk and cfdisk will not create this; sfdisk will, if you ask for it.
I would be interested in information about which versions of which systems have used this alternative way.
Andries - aeb@cwi.nl
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