Re: Disk Geometries reported incorrectly on 2.6.0-testX

[Szakacsits Szabolcs]

On Sat, 29 Nov 2003, Andrew Clausen wrote:
> On Fri, Nov 28, 2003 at 03:24:52PM +0100, Andries Brouwer wrote:
> >
> > There is no such thing as a "correct" disk geometry.
> 
> Yes there is.  "Correct" is defined by the BIOS.  It is important
> for boot loaders (in particular Windows).  

I suspected the same ... What Windows you mean? DOS (9x/ME/etc) or NT based
(NT4/2000/XP/2003)? All?

> I'm not sure if this is still a big issue worth worrying about.

IMHO it might be. At least I'm getting an increasing number of emails from
people who can't boot Windows anymore after resizing and repartitioning
NTFS on Linux. Everybody thinks it's the Linux NTFS code's fault but so far
it was always about the repartitioning going wrong. I just had to write a
FAQ entry about this issue recently

        http://mlf.linux.rulez.org/mlf/ezaz/ntfsresize.html#troubleshoot

Some users, having problems, did mention the usage of 2.6 kernel. If the
geometry changed during the fdisk, etc process then it could result also
booting problem? It's just a speculation because I've never had enough
information to investigate.

Also, can Parted save/restore the full and exact partition table a
scriptable way? I mean something like this:

        sfdisk -d /dev/hda > hda.pt       # save
        sfdisk /dev/hda < hda.pt          # restore

sfdisk can't recover geometry so apparently no one-liner, widely available,
partition table backup/recovery is possible at present on Linux :-o
dd if=/dev/hda of=hda.mbr bs=512 count=1 won't save the logical partitions.

        Szaka