Chuma Agbodike <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > One thing still puzzles me that I hope you can clear up for me. > Supposing I buy a brand new hard disk. IDE, SCSI or whatever. > To use it, I have to partition it, using a utility like FDISK . > FDISK writes the MBR and Partition Table. Right ?
Yes. (The MBR contains the partition table). > If I go and start copying files to any of the partitions, the data can't > be read. Because I have to format or initialize the partition before > writing to it . Right ? Yes. The partition table points to the location on disk where the partition starts, and also holds it's size and type - but what's actually on the partition is of no concern to fdisk. > So how come the system can write/read the MBR and partition table ??? The system can read/write the partition too - it just can't access a file system on the partition, because there isn't one yet. When you "format or initialize" the partition, you are actually putting a file system on it. For DOS that means creating and writing the boot sector, placing two empty FATs, an empty root directory - all the bookkeeping stuff that DOS needs. (Don't be fooled by DOS format "formatting" the whole partition - writing the filesystem only takes a second. The rest is verifying if it can actually access all sectors, i.e. checking for bad blocks). For Linux (or any other OS) it is basically the same: before the system can actually use a partition, a filesystem must be created with e.g. mke2fs. Gertjan. -- Gertjan Klein <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> The Boot Control home page: http://www.xs4all.nl/~gklein/bcpage.html -- TO UNSUBSCRIBE FROM THIS MAILING LIST: e-mail the word "unsubscribe" to [EMAIL PROTECTED] . Trouble? e-mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] .
