OFFTOPIC: New MBR and partitioning standard?

[Stefan Reinauer]

BTW: Welcome back, Dave. I hope this attempt of our project won't go the
same way as the last times :-) But I have some good news, coming in later
mails... :)))

On Sat, 6 Mar 1999, Dave Cinege wrote:

> Isn't it about time the x86 platform supported more then 4 'real' partiti=
ons?
True..

> I'm getting really sick of this limitation and was thinking of sitting do=
wn
> 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 sect=
or.
> That leaves 63 512byte sectors that are always free. Why not extend the n=
ormal
> partition entires say 16 sectors (=3D=3D about 512 16byte partition entir=
es),
> and reserve the remaining sectors for extended MBR code? (IE the code in
> sector 0, hops to sector 18)
>=20
> This would be very easy to implement and remain compatible with legacy OS=
's.
> A boot manager (partition entry swapper) program could be used to move
> 'extended' entries in and out of the original sector 0 partition table
> for the sake of further legacy OS compatibility.

Hmm.. why invent the wheel new? We could let's say use the Amiga RDB
standard which allows nearly unlimited partitions by having data organized
in linked lists.
Or BSD Disklabel with it's 8 or 16 partitions
The advantage of this way would be that all Linux and *BSD systems, which
interpret disklabels themselves, would support new partitions at once and
you would not have to write any new fdisks or sth like that

> I'll set up a mailing list/and or have some IRC meetings to discuss detai=
ls.

Hmm IRC is a good idea.. Do you think we should have an own IRC server or
use EFnet or IRCnet (I am on IRCnet all the time, so I'd vote for IRCnet,
but I don't really matter)

Regards,
  Stefan

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