Re: [Linux-NTFS-Dev] Windows Dynamic Disks, Parted

[Andrew Clausen]

Hi Szaka,

On Sat, Sep 04, 2004 at 12:50:22PM +0200, Szakacsits Szabolcs wrote:
> > If Parted sees that a partition table is a LDM disk (i.e. has a
> > partition of type 0x42), should it simply refuse to recognize it?  i.e.
> > say that it isn't a partition table.
> 
> Well, in the above email I wrote,
> 
>   "Partitioners must detect if one has a dynamic disk (it was designed to
>   be very easy to detect) and refuse to progress or implement dynamic disk
>   resizing."
> 
> But I've meant it in its context, namely non-destructive NTFS resizing.
> 
> General support is much more complex. You also have to think about cases
> like:
> 
>     - user wants to get rid of windows dynamic partitions
> 
>     - user wants to fix spoiled windows dynamic partition entries

Can you give a practical example of this?

>     - user wants to edit non-dynamic disk partition entries (I've thought
>       it was impossible mixing windows dynamic partitons and basic 
>       partitons but I've seen them working together)
> 
>     - perhaps other scenarios

Shouldn't all of this stuff be provided by a Windows Dynamic Disk program
rather than Parted?  Therefore, shouldn't Parted always refuse to touch
it?

The counter-argument is that the Windows Dynamic Disk program might
want to use libparted to handle the partition table stuff.  Is this
likely?  This is rather hypothetical though, since the linux-ntfs
projects' LDM program is still rather immature (is that right?).

In any case, I don't have access to Windows XP Professional, and I
can't test this stuff out myself.  I am comfortable with doing the
following things immediately:

 * option 1: simply refuse to touch them.

 * option 2: make a new partition table type called dynamic-disk,
 and make it read-only.  (It would share the disk_dos.c code).
 
 * option 3: make a new partition table type called dynamic-disk,
 and make it only permit modification of non-0x42 partitions.

Have you got any other proposals?

Cheers,
Andrew