dumb question about fdisk

Bob Edwards Robert.Edwards at anu.edu.au
Fri Aug 23 09:22:46 EST 2002


Matthew Hawkins wrote:
> 
> Kim Holburn (kim.holburn at anu.edu.au) wrote:
> > I have a disk which is running, mounted etc. and I want to change the
> > bootable flag to another partition.  I change the flag then I have to
> > "write table to disk and exit".  Will this destroy data on my disk?  I
> 
> Yes.  With any luck, it will completely destroy the data containing the
> previous setting of the bootable flag on that partition.
> 
> In fact, the authors might even be lazy and it will destroy all the
> previous data on the partition table (replacing it all with the new
> one).  I think this has something to do with the disk having to be
> written to in 512-byte blocks.
> 
> As for the rest of the disk, in my experience Linux fdisk has never
> touched it.
> 

Matt, you are such a delight on this list, sometimes!

Cheers,

Bob Edwards.



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