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From: Bob Willcox <bob@luke.pmr.com>
Message-Id: <199605120312.WAA13946@luke.pmr.com>
Subject: Re: Help! I need to shrink a DOS partition.
To: rnordier@iafrica.com (Robert Nordier)
Date: Sat, 11 May 1996 22:12:33 -0500 (CDT)
Cc: questions@freebsd.org
In-Reply-To: <199605120205.EAA05789@eac.iafrica.com> from Robert Nordier at "May 12, 96 04:05:01 am"
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Robert Nordier wrote:
> Bob Willcox wrote:
> > 
> > ...
>
> ...
>
> You should really approach FIPS with caution, however, as it
> relies on a sort of trick to do its magic.  Having been FIPS-ed,
> your DOS partition is much more vulnerable to damage, because your
> DOS filesystem parameters are no longer standard.  If MS-DOS one day
> decides it can no longer trust your partition boot sector (whether
> through the action of a virus, or corruption from another cause),
> it will resort to using default filesystem parameters.  This may 
> well cause all your DOS files to become quite unreadable, and could
> mess up data on your entire hard drive.
> 
> If you really would rather be safe than sorry, a process such as
> the following is recommended:
> 
>    Use FIPS to split DOS partition C:
>    DOS format the newly-created partition as D:
>    Zip the entire contents of C: to D:
>    Re-fdisk and re-format C:
>    Unzip D: to C:
> 
> You should also be aware that the FreeBSD msdosfs code has problems
> with some DOS partitions; and you are more likely to experience
> problems if your DOS partition has been shrunk by FIPS.
> 
> In summary: proceed with caution.

Thanks for the warning and suggestion...you convinced me!

> 
> [Note to the Powers That Be: All this probably needs to be FAQ-ed,
> if it isn't there already.]
> 
> --
> Robert Nordier
> 


-- 
Bob Willcox
bob@luke.pmr.com
Austin, TX