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Date: Fri, 7 Oct 2005 20:43:53 -0500
From: "Z.C.B." <vvelox@vvelox.net>
To: garys@opusnet.com (Gary W. Swearingen)
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Cc: Norberto Meijome <freebsd@meijome.net>, freebsd-questions@freebsd.org
Subject: Re: Hidden spot on hard drives?
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On Thu, 06 Oct 2005 09:26:08 -0700
garys@opusnet.com (Gary W. Swearingen) wrote:

> Norberto Meijome <freebsd@meijome.net> writes:
> 
> > Where does HPA(Host protected Area) sit in all this? is this the
> > 'boot sector' trick?
> 
> I don't know.  I just heard that some computer makers are somehow
> reserving as much as half the HDD for a full copy of the OS to
> recover from when the normal one trips over itself.  I'm guessing
> that this has more to do with MSFT licensing terms than with saving
> a buck from not including a CDROM.  I wonder if there's some
> low-level way to tell a modern disk drive where you want "sector 0"
> to start.

As a tech, I have seen this before. Let me assure you this has
everything thing to do with saving a bit of money. BTW those
partitions are rather easy to access... just take it out and put it
in another machine. The installation of windows on drives like that
are set up not to see it, for the most part. IIRC it is visible from
the MMC. If you take the drive out and put in another machine, it is
perfectly visible.