ÉÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍ» º EFDISK v2.8 DOCUMENTATION º º Copyright (c) 1997-1999 Nagy Daniel º º Release date: 06-28-1999 º ÈÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍͼ ÚÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄ¿ ³ CONTENTS ³ ÀÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÙ Disclaimer............................ 1 Copyright............................. 2 Introduction.......................... 3 Features.............................. 4 Requirements.......................... 5 Usage (IMPORTANT!).................... 6 Partition types....................... 7 History............................... 8 Technical information................. 9 Contact, about the author............ 10 ÚÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄ¿ ³ DISCLAIMER ÃÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄ 1 ÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄ ÀÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÙ Using this program comes without any warranty. The author and distributors will not accept responsibility for any damage incurred directly or indirectly through use of this program. Use at your own risk! ÚÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄ¿ ³ COPYRIGHT ÃÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄ 2 ÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄ ÀÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÙ All copyrights are exclusively owned by the author, Nagy Daniel. This program is a part of the MasterBooter package. Distributing it separately is not allowed. You can distribute the whole unmodified shareware MasterBooter package only with all files intact! Distributing the registered version is not allowed! For other distributing information see the MasterBooter documentation. ÚÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄ¿ ³ INTRODUCTION ÃÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄ 3 ÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄ ÀÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÙ EFDISK (Extended FDISK) is a disk partitioning program. With EFDISK you can create or modify primary partitions on your harddisks. EFDISK supports many partition types, however you cannot make logical drives and extended partitions with it. The original FDISK program doesn't allow you to create more than one primary partition. EFDISK does, therefore it's a powerful tool to help installing more operating systems on your PC. The registered version can create partitions by automatically calculating the remaining free space. This can be extremely useful for system administrators, schools and computer store employees. EFDISK is a support program of MasterBooter. ÚÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄ¿ ³ FEATURES ÃÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄ 4 ÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄ ÀÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÙ - Displaying partition information of all drives in your system - Creating or editing partitions (causes data loss!) - Compatibility with all partition types, including: FAT16, FAT32 (DOS, Windows, Windows95/98, OS/2) Hidden FAT, NTFS/HPFS HPFS (OS/2) Ext2FS (Linux) Linux swap (Linux) NTFS (Windows NT) - Easy-to-use user interface - Usable via command line options (use /? option for help) ÚÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄ¿ ³ REQUIREMENTS ÃÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄ 5 ÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄ ÀÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÙ - 80286 processor or up - MS-DOS or compatible operating system - At least one harddisk - Keyboard - VGA adapter ÚÄÄÄÄÄÄÄ¿ ³ USAGE ÃÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄ 6 ÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄ ÀÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÙ Note: Playing with partitions is a risky job! Use this program only if you know what you're doing! Be sure to read the documentation! 1) Installation You can copy these files (this docs and the executables) together wherever you like. This program doesn't need any additional settings. Just execute it. Copying this program to a system floppy can be useful. 2) Usage information For safety: 0) BACK UP ALL IMPORTANT DATA! 1) Make a system disk by typing: 'format a: /s' 2) Run the program MRESCUE.COM. Choose the 'Create rescue disk' option. It will copy important information about your disks and the MRESCUE.COM itself to floppy, so you can restore your previous configuration later if necessary. 3) Now you can safely run EFDISK. If anything goes wrong, boot from the floppy you've just created, run MRESCUE.COM and choose 'Restore original configuration'. This will reset all modifications. Send me a mail if something is not working, and write all steps you've done unless I won't be able to correct the problem. Thank You! Before running EFDISK quit all multitasking environments (i.e. WindowsNT or OS/2 DOS box) and run plain DOS, because these operating systems won't let programs to modify the Master Boot Record. EFDISK gathers information about your harddisks and partitions. It shows a list of all primary partitions of all harddisks and their parameters. From this list you can choose the partition you want to change. In the upper right window, the program shows the number of cylinders, heads and sectors of each harddisk. The highlight can be moved with the up/down arrow keys. Press ENTER to change the parameters of the highlighted partition. All data in a changed partition will be lost! After pressing ENTER on a partition, EFDISK asks several questions. These are: - The hexadecimal type ID of the partition. EFDISK will show you the most common types and IDs. Type the value, and press ENTER. Check out section 7 in this documentation for more types. - Starting cylinder number of partition (the minimum is 0). If the previous partition is ending on cylinder 'x' then set this to 'x+1'. This number is decimal. Type and press ENTER. - Ending cylinder number of partition. EFDISK will show you the maximum cylinder number available for the actual harddisk. This number is also decimal. Type and press ENTER. The number of heads and sectors per track values are determined automatically for each disk, you don't have to mess with them. Pressing SPACE will activate the highlighted partition, pressing DEL will clear the whole highlighted entry. Pressing 'h' over a FAT partition will cause hiding/unhiding it. This can be important if OS/2 is used, or if you don't want Windows95/NT to recognize other primary FAT partitions. After preparing all partition entries, press F10 to save the new partition table to the harddisk. !! Usage note: - EFDISK doesn't check for partition errors! It's not an !! 'intelligent' program. You have total freedom to set all !! parameters, even if they are incorrect or useless! 3) Command line usage Since v2.1 EFDISK can be used with command line options. With command line options, one can create, delete and activate partitions, and hide/unhide primary FAT partitions. This can be very useful for system administrators, hardware/software stores or schools. Note that the changes will take effect only after a reboot. If there was an error, then the return value is 1, else 0. The syntax is: efdisk command [harddisk_number] Defining the partition number is always compulsory except for the 'delall' command, where is must be omitted. The commands are: /create type starting_cyl. ending_cyl. - to create /crsize type size_in_MB - to create (registered only) /delete - to delete /delall - to delete all /activate - to activate /hidefat - to hide primary FAT /hident - to hide primary NTFS/HPFS /unhidefat - to unhide primary FAT /unhident - to unhide primary NTFS/HPFS /mbr - to install new MBR loader /print - to print the partition table /? - to get help - Only one command is allowed per command line. - The type is hexadecimal, the cylinders are decimal numbers. - Partition number is a number from 1 to 4. Only one partition number is allowed per command (don't use this parameter for delall, mbr and print commands). - Disk number is a number from 1 to 4. If omitted, the default is 1. Only one disk number is allowed per command. - The /crsize command calculates the new partition's starting cylinder from the previous partition's ending cylinder. Therefore always be sure, that the previous partition entry defines an already existing valid partition, or you will loose your data! If the new partition is the first partition, then the starting cylinder number will be 0. This command is only available in the registered version. - The /mbr, /delall and /print commands only need a harddisk number (the default is the primary master harddisk if not specified) Examples: -------- - To create a primary BIGDOS partition (type 6) with starting cylinder 12, ending cylinder 265 in the 3rd partition entry on the 2nd harddisk, type: efdisk /create 6 12 265 3 2 - to create a 165MB BIGDOS partition in the 2nd entry (1st must be a valid existing partition) on the 1st harddisk, type: efdisk /crsize 6 165 2 (registered version only) - To delete the 2nd partition on the 1st harddisk, type: efdisk /delete 2 (note that the disk number can be omitted if 1) - To delete all partitions on the 3rd harddisk, type: efdisk /delall 3 - To hide the 4th partition (must be FAT) on the 1st harddisk type: efdisk /hidefat 4 Creating automatically calculated partitions (registered version only): ---------------------------------------------------------------------- The registered version can automatically calculate partition size upon creating one. The 'create' command accepts '*' characters instead of the starting and the ending cylinder numbers. In this case the starting cylinder number will be the ending cylinder number of the previous partition + 1, and the ending cylinder number will be the maximum cylinder number of the harddisk. Because of this, all partitions beyond an automatically calculated one will be lost! If you specify 1 for the partition number then the starting cylinder number will be 0 (because there is no previous existing partition) so this command will create a partition which will use all harddisk space. In this case, all data will be lost after formatting this partition! For example: efdisk /create 6 * * 3 2 The above command will create a BIGDOS partition in the third entry on the second harddisk, with the automatic calculation of the starting and the ending cylinders using all remaining space after the second partition. This feature can be useful when there is a need for creating hundreds of same systems with different harddisk sizes, which already contain a fixed sized smaller partition (for example Compaq machines with a diagnostic partition). Notes about automatic partition creation: - Never leave off a single '*'! If you use '*' then both cylinder numbers must be '*' characters. It is not possible to define either cylinder number and use '*' for the other, i.e. 'efdisk 6 12 * 2 1' is not valid. - If the partition number is 2, 3 or 4, then the starting cylinder value will be calculated from the ending cylinder value of the previous partition. If the partition number is 1 then the starting cylinder number will be 0. - Be sure that there are no existing partitions after an automatically created one, because it will use all remaining space, therefore partitions after the automatically created one would be erased. 4) General notes about partitioning - If the computer doesn't boot after using EFDISK or other partitioners don't recognize partitions created with EFDISK, then do an 'efdisk /mbr' command. This problem may occur with brand new harddisks, which don't contain the proper loader routine and the 0AA55h MBR signature in their MBRs yet. This command erases an existing boot menu! - If there's data in the other partitions of your harddisk than the partitions you'll change then create backups of your partition tables with MRESCUE for safety. - You can have only one active partition in your harddisk's partition table. If you activate a partition, EFDISK will automatically clear the other partition's 'active' flag. - There's no point to activate extended partitions - hiding/unhiding works only with primary FAT, NTFS/HPFS partitions !! - Don't use EFDISK to resize, move or change the type of such !! existing partitions that contain data you need! Once you alter !! an entry (except activating or hiding/unhiding it) the data !! in that partition will be lost! 5) Notes about various systems Windows(95/NT)/DOS: - DOS cannot boot if its partition begins beyond 2Gb. It's a bug in DOS's boot sector. - Create a BIGDOS partition before installing Windows NT, because NT can convert it to NTFS during installation if needed. So creating an NTFS partition with EFDISK is unnecessary. OS/2: - Create a BIGDOS partition before installing OS/2, because OS/2 can convert it to HPFS during installation if needed. So creating an HPFS partition with EFDISK is unnecessary. ÚÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄ¿ ³ PARTITION TYPES ÃÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄ 7 ÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄ ÀÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÙ These are the currently known partition types. These values are from Ralph Brown's interrupt list. (A big thanks goes to him for maintaining that impressive documentation!) ID Name ÄÄ ÄÄÄÄ 00h empty 01h DOS 12-bit FAT 02h XENIX root file system 03h XENIX /usr file system (obsolete) 04h DOS 16-bit FAT (up to 32M) 05h DOS 3.3+ extended partition 06h DOS 3.31+ Large File System (16-bit FAT, over 32M) 07h QNX 07h OS/2 HPFS 07h Windows NT NTFS 07h Advanced Unix 08h OS/2 (v1.0-1.3 only) 08h AIX bootable partition, SplitDrive 08h Commodore DOS 08h DELL partition spanning multiple drives 09h AIX data partition 09h Coherent filesystem 0Ah OS/2 Boot Manager 0Ah OPUS 0Ah Coherent swap partition 0Bh Windows 95 with 32-bit FAT 0Ch Windows 95 with 32-bit FAT (using LBA-mode INT 13 extensions) 0Eh LBA VFAT (same as 06h but using LBA-mode INT 13) 0Fh LBA VFAT (same as 05h but using LBA-mode INT 13) 10h OPUS 11h OS/2 Boot Manager hidden 12-bit FAT partition 12h Compaq Diagnostics partition 14h (using Novell DOS 7.0 FDISK to delete Linux Native part) 14h OS/2 Boot Manager hidden sub-32M 16-bit FAT partition 16h OS/2 Boot Manager hidden over-32M 16-bit FAT partition 17h OS/2 Boot Manager hidden HPFS partition 18h AST special Windows swap file 1Bh Hidden Windows 95 with 32-bit FAT (not official!) 1Ch Hidden Windows 95 with 32-bit LBA FAT (not official!) 1Eh Hidden Windows 95 with LBA BIGDOS (not official!) 21h officially listed as reserved 23h officially listed as reserved 24h NEC MS-DOS 3.x 26h officially listed as reserved 31h officially listed as reserved 33h officially listed as reserved 34h officially listed as reserved 36h officially listed as reserved 38h Theos 3Ch PowerQuest PartitionMagic recovery partition 40h VENIX 80286 41h Personal RISC Boot 42h SFS (Secure File System) by Peter Gutmann 4Fh Oberon 50h OnTrack Disk Manager, read-only partition 51h OnTrack Disk Manager, read/write partition 51h NOVEL 52h CP/M 52h Microport System V/386 53h OnTrack Disk Manager, write-only partition??? 54h OnTrack Disk Manager (DDO) 56h GoldenBow VFeature 61h SpeedStor 63h Unix SysV/386, 386/ix 63h Mach, MtXinu BSD 4.3 on Mach 63h GNU HURD 64h Novell NetWare 286 65h Novell NetWare (3.11) 67h Novell 68h Novell 69h Novell 70h DiskSecure Multi-Boot 71h officially listed as reserved 73h officially listed as reserved 74h officially listed as reserved 75h PC/IX 76h officially listed as reserved 80h Minix v1.1 - 1.4a 81h Minix v1.4b+ 81h Linux 81h Mitac Advanced Disk Manager 82h Linux Swap partition 82h Prime 82h Solaris 83h Linux native file system (ext2fs/xiafs) 84h OS/2-renumbered type 04h partition (hiding DOS C: drive) 86h officially listed as reserved 87h HPFS Fault-Tolerant mirrored partition 93h Amoeba file system 94h Amoeba bad block table A1h officially listed as reserved A3h officially listed as reserved A4h officially listed as reserved A5h FreeBSD, BSD/386 A6h officially listed as reserved B1h officially listed as reserved B3h officially listed as reserved B4h officially listed as reserved B6h officially listed as reserved B7h BSDI file system (secondarily swap) B8h BSDI swap partition (secondarily file system) C1h DR DOS 6.0 LOGIN.EXE-secured 12-bit FAT partition C4h DR DOS 6.0 LOGIN.EXE-secured 16-bit FAT partition C6h DR DOS 6.0 LOGIN.EXE-secured Huge partition C7h Syrinx Boot D8h CP/M-86 DBh CP/M, Concurrent CP/M, Concurrent DOS DBh CTOS (Convergent Technologies OS) E1h SpeedStor 12-bit FAT extended partition E3h DOS read-only E3h Storage Dimensions E4h SpeedStor 16-bit FAT extended partition E5h officially listed as reserved E6h officially listed as reserved EBh BeOS partition F1h Storage Dimensions F2h DOS 3.3+ secondary partition F3h officially listed as reserved F4h SpeedStor F4h Storage Dimensions F6h officially listed as reserved FEh LANstep FEh IBM PS/2 IML FFh Xenix bad block table ÚÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄ¿ ³ HISTORY ÃÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄ 8 ÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄ ÀÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÙ Version: 1.1 - First official release in the MasterBooter package 1.2 - If the starting cylinder of a partition was 0, then the 'relative starting sector' and 'number of sectors' value in the partition table were incorrect. Now they're correct 1.3 - Fixed a small bug, that sometimes caused incorrect 'number of sectors' value 1.4 - Now the 'Space' key can be used to activate a partition, so no need to retype all parameters - With large hard drives, sometimes the partition sizes were incorrect. Now they are always correct 1.5 - Added partition deleting. Just press DEL over a partition. Setting all partition parameters to zero is the same - Now it is possible to set a partition active on the slave disk. One partition per disk can be made active. This is very useful when partitioning a slave disk, which will be used as master in an other PC 2.0 - Added 'h' key to hide/unhide a FAT partition 2.1 - Now supporting up to four harddisks - Fixed a bug which caused incompatibility with some SCSI disks - After writing the new Master Boot Record, pressing ESC will quit to DOS (doesn't reboot) - Added command line options for creating, deleting, activating and hiding partitions (use the /? option for more information) 2.2 - Fixed a small bug, which occurred at entering the partition ID - Added support for hiding/unhiding FAT32 - Added support for FreeBSD - The logical characteristics of the harddisks are shown in the upper right window 2.3 - Now works in Windows95 DOS box - Added support for many partition types - Added /crsize command to create partitions by size (registered version only) - Registered version can automatically calculate partition sizes when creating partitions from command line 2.4 - Added /mbr command to install the standard DOS MBR loader 2.5 - Added /print command to print the current partition table - Fixed a bug in the /mbr switch - Fixed a FAT32 creation bug. FAT32 needs 3 boot sectors... 2.6 - Added NTFS/HPFS partition hiding (command line too) 2.7 - SPACE now toggles active flag if a partition is already active - The /mbr command unhides hidden partitions 2.8 - New FAT32 bug fixed - Added Oberon support - Added BeOS support ÚÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄ¿ ³ TECHNICAL INFORMATION ÃÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄ 9 ÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄ ÀÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÙ General information: ÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄ A harddisk can contain up to four primary partitions. The partition table (which resides in the very first sector of your harddisk) describes the type, bootability and starting/ending cylinder number of the partitions. In bootable partitions, the first sector is always the so called 'boot sector' which contains a small OS loader. In these partitions you can install any operating system in theory. But in the real world some operating systems don't allow you to create more than one primary partition, or to boot another operating system. So creating multiple primary partitions and choosing the operating system at boot time is quite difficult. That's why I wrote EFDISK and MasterBooter. About FAT types: ÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄ There are four types of FAT (File Allocation Table). 1: FAT12 is now obsolete, used on floppy disks and on partitions smaller than 16Mb. 2: FAT16 is the next step. It can be used if a DOS partition is between 16Mb and 32Mb. 3: BIGDOS is also a 16-bit type, but allows larger partition sizes. Plain DOS and Windows95 use this type nowadays (OS/2, WindowsNT and Linux can also be installed over FAT, but there is no point for doing that). The maximum partition size is 2Gb. 4: FAT32 is the newest, it is introduced in Windows95 OEM Service Release 2. It allows really big partition sizes (8Gb), but it's quite incompatible with the older types. ÚÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄ¿ ³ CONTACT ÃÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄ 10 ÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄ ÀÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÙ If you have any problems, questions or suggestions you can contact me through snail mail or e-mail. Bug reports, ideas are also welcomed! Currently I'm a student at the University of Veszprem, department of Information Technology. I'm 25 (in 1999). Postal address: Internet E-mail address: ÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄ ÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄ Nagy Daniel masterbooter@cyberjunkie.com 2011 Budakalasz Ciklamen u. 19 Hungary Fax: (36) 26 340-472 WWW homepage: ÄÄÄ ÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄ http://www.cyberjunkie.com/masterbooter