Michael H. Warfield wrote: > On Tue, 2006-04-25 at 09:49 -0500, Mikkel L. Ellertson wrote: > >> I am not sure what "It" is, but partitions are not formatted when >> they are created - you have to specify the type of formatting you >> want done. One thing to keep in mind - if you do not specify that >> you want FAT32, then mkdosfs will not create a FAT32 file system. I >> am not sure, but I believe this is to maintain computability with >> the widest range of DOS versions. > > True... But partitions are tagged with a "type" when they are created. > If you have a partition of type 6 (FAT16) and format it as VFAT32, how > is it suppose to be handled? Linux doesn't care. Windows might. How > should the BIOS handle it? Can you say that no software will get > confused if you format a partition type 83 (Linux) with VFAT? Will > Windows find it? > > Safest thing is to make sure the partition type, in the partition > table, agrees with the file system you are formatting on the partition. > > Mike > Windows will pay attention to the partition type. It ignores partitions that do not have the correct partition type. Boot loaders use this to have more then one Windows install on the same drive. This is why there are listings for "Hidden" partition types. I have not tried it, but I suspect that Windows does not check that the formatting matches the partition type as long as it is a type of FAT partition. It would be interesting to see if the tools that convert from FAT16 to FAT32 change the partition type. As far as the BIOS goes, with the exception of some BIOS update routines, the BIOS does not care about file system types. Depending on the BIOS, it may care about the MBR, and that a hard drive partition be marked as active. Most newer BIOS know if removable media is bootable. But if you play with older hardware, you can run into systems that will have problems if there is a non-bootable floppy in the drive, and it is set to try and boot off of floppy first. (Non-system disk error.) Mikkel -- Do not meddle in the affairs of dragons, for thou art crunchy and taste good with Ketchup!
