Re: Disk Geometries reported incorrectly on 2.6.0-testX

[Andries Brouwer]

> > 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.

sfdisk has a slightly different option: -O will save all sectors that
you change during an sfdisk operation, so that you can restore them later.

You see, saving the logical partitions is not enough - these sectors
are spread out over the disk, and there used to be something else
where these sectors are written. If the user makes a partitioning mistake
he destroys a sector worth of data. It is that data that sfdisk -O will save
(and -I will restore).