Hi Jan,
On 29/09/2005, at 4:14 PM, Jan Johansson wrote:
Let me then tell you how Windows XP flushed my USB drive to
bitheaven because i used fdisk to make a normal partition table
on it.
XP has stuffed me up too on occasion. I try to stay well away from
2000/XP Disk Manager. (Is that what it's called?)
From memory, if your partitions are not in sequential order (2,1,3,4
for
example) and you then run Disk Manager, it "fixes" the situation, but
what you end up with is Windows partitions that are okay, but any non
MS partitions are hosed. Why they can't just leave a working config
alone is beyond me.
Another thing that has annoyed me in the past, is that the boot loader
for XP at least (I think possibly also 2k), does not count partition
numbers from what the partition table states, but actually where they
appear on disk. If I have a blank area reserved as a future partition 2
at the beginning of the disk and Windows has partition 1 after that, if
I later use the blank area say for OpenBSD as partition 2, I think I am
safe because the partition number for Windows has not changed. Think
again, Windows no longer boots. So I have to fix it by changing the
boot.ini entry. Then one day if I accidentally run the disastrous
Disk Manager, I am stuffed once again.
Also, I always "safely remove" my USB storage devices and wait for the
access light to go out and every now and then I suffer from lost files
or sometimes even entire file systems. MS provides some crazy
situations with their own systems.
I agree that MS is hardly a role model for this sort of stuff.
BTW, I have not noticed any problems with -t msdos. Maybe I don't use
it often enough.
Bye for now,
Shane J Pearson
