From owner-freebsd-questions Sun May 14 09:08:17 1995 Return-Path: questions-owner Received: (from majordom@localhost) by freefall.cdrom.com (8.6.10/8.6.6) id JAA16287 for questions-outgoing; Sun, 14 May 1995 09:08:17 -0700 Received: from mramirez.sy.yale.edu (mramirez.sy.yale.edu [130.132.57.207]) by freefall.cdrom.com (8.6.10/8.6.6) with ESMTP id JAA16280 for ; Sun, 14 May 1995 09:08:13 -0700 Received: (from mrami@localhost) by mramirez.sy.yale.edu (8.6.11/8.6.9) id MAA05914; Sun, 14 May 1995 12:08:22 -0400 Date: Sun, 14 May 1995 12:08:21 -0400 (EDT) From: Marc Ramirez Reply-To: mrami@minerva.cis.yale.edu To: Gene Stark cc: Steve Galle , questions@FreeBSD.org Subject: Re: MSDOS Partition In-Reply-To: <199505122338.TAA03714@starkhome.cs.sunysb.edu> Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: questions-owner@FreeBSD.org Precedence: bulk On Fri, 12 May 1995, Gene Stark wrote: > >You have a time bomb on your hands. Mine just blew a few days ago. The problem > >is that even though you did the fdisk and set the new partitioning, the > >disklabel is still telling dos it has the whole disk to play with. Of course, a > > Does DOS have a "disklabel"? What seems to happen is the following: > > If you use FDISK to partition your disk, and then > you format one slice under DOS, and then > you change the MBR partition table with FDISK, you leave > the DOS slice starting at the same place, but you > reduce its size, and then > you put good FreeBSD data in the area that used to be allocated > to DOS, but isn't any more, and then > you use DOS FORMAT to try to reformat the smaller slice, > > then DOS will quite happily and quickly ignore what the MBR says and > format over your good FreeBSD data. DOS will be happy iff you reformat the partition (or use a partition editor like fips). Otherwise, the FAT still believes the DOS slice extends into the FreeBSD one, and DOS will happily allocate/write blocks in your root partition... > The solution is to backup your DOS area, then use FreeBSD to write > garbage (like a copy of /kernel, or something) over the beginning of > the DOS slice so that it doesn't appear to be valid to DOS. > > Then you can reformat safely under DOS. > > - Gene Stark Marc. -- You couldn't get a clue during the clue mating season in a field full of horny clues if you smeared your body with clue musk and did the clue mating dance. - Edward Flaherty