Re: FAT16 help needed!!!
From: Hans-Bernhard Broeker (broeker_at_physik.rwth-aachen.de)
Date: 12/31/03
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Date: 31 Dec 2003 00:35:51 GMT
Sprow <news@sprow.co.uk> wrote:
> I assume this made-up "big floppy" and "hard disk" terminology serves
> mainly to confuse everyone?
Not really. The technical distinction is, of course, presence or
absence of an MBR on the medium. Actual floppy disks (5.25", and
their not quite so floppy 3.5" offspring) never have an MBR, which is
why the no-MBR way of creating a file system on a medium gained the
nickname "big floppy". No confusion to be found here.
OTOH, the format with a partition table and a single primary partition
being referred to as "hard disk" is indeed a bit of a misnomer. It
had better be called the "partitioned" style of formatting a medium.
> It's perfectly valid to have a fixed disc (media type 0xF8) with or
> without a partition table,
Is it? So how would the system know not to treat the bytes in the
relevant part of the boot code of a big-floppy medium as a partition
table?
> Conversely the other media type bytes (0xF9/FC/FD/FE/FF) for
> removable media can't have partition tables.
... but since each of those is inherently tied to a particular floppy
disk format / density /sidedness, they may not be available for use
with other formats that don't match any of the ancient floppy disk
formats.
> It's just that flash cards from cameras etc are considered by
> Windows et al as a 'fixed disc' but which just happens to be
> removable!
Windows indeed allows this superficially self-contradictory state of
affairs --- but some other systems, at least traditionally, didn't.
If memory serves, OS/2 was one system that strictly refused to treat
anything but "big-floppy" formatted media as removable. At that same
time, Windows didn't recognize anything big-floppy at all, causing
never-ending friction between these two systems, e.g. for users of MO
drives.
-- Hans-Bernhard Broeker (broeker@physik.rwth-aachen.de) Even if all the snow were burnt, ashes would remain.
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