On Sat, 06 Mar 1999, Dave Cinege wrote:
Isn't it about time the x86 platform supported more then 4 'real' partitions?
I'm getting really sick of this limitation and was thinking of sitting down with some peers, drafting a new extended MBR standard, then submitting it OS vendors.
For instance, the first partition is (generally) started on the 65th sector. That leaves 63 512byte sectors that are always free. Why not extend the normal partition entires say 16 sectors (== about 512 16byte partition entires), and reserve the remaining sectors for extended MBR code? (IE the code in sector 0, hops to sector 18)
Why wait for general acceptance? An extension of this sort can be implemented OS-by-OS, with non-compatible OS's using the old extended partition system. Just put some kind of checksum and magic number in the extended MBR area :)
Taral