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╔═════════════════════════════════════╗
║ EFDISK v2.8 DOCUMENTATION ║
║ Copyright (c) 1997-1999 Nagy Daniel ║
║ Release date: 06-28-1999 ║
╚═════════════════════════════════════╝
┌──────────┐
│ CONTENTS │
└──────────┘
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
┌────────────┐
│ DISCLAIMER ├──────────────────────── 1 ─────────────────────────────────────
└────────────┘
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!
┌───────────┐
│ COPYRIGHT ├───────────────────────── 2 ─────────────────────────────────────
└───────────┘
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.
┌──────────────┐
│ INTRODUCTION ├────────────────────── 3 ─────────────────────────────────────
└──────────────┘
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.
┌──────────┐
│ FEATURES ├────────────────────────── 4 ─────────────────────────────────────
└──────────┘
- 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)
┌──────────────┐
│ REQUIREMENTS ├────────────────────── 5 ─────────────────────────────────────
└──────────────┘
- 80286 processor or up
- MS-DOS or compatible operating system
- At least one harddisk
- Keyboard
- VGA adapter
┌───────┐
│ USAGE ├───────────────────────────── 6 ─────────────────────────────────────
└───────┘
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 <partition_number> [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.
┌─────────────────┐
│ PARTITION TYPES ├─────────────────── 7 ─────────────────────────────────────
└─────────────────┘
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
── ────
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
┌─────────┐
│ HISTORY ├─────────────────────────── 8 ─────────────────────────────────────
└─────────┘
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
┌───────────────────────┐
│ TECHNICAL INFORMATION ├───────────── 9 ─────────────────────────────────────
└───────────────────────┘
General information:
────────────────────
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:
────────────────
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.
┌─────────┐
│ CONTACT ├─────────────────────────── 10 ────────────────────────────────────
└─────────┘
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:
─────────────── ────────────────────────
Nagy Daniel masterbooter@cyberjunkie.com
2011 Budakalasz
Ciklamen u. 19
Hungary
Fax: (36) 26 340-472 WWW homepage:
─── ─────────────
http://www.cyberjunkie.com/masterbooter