[SlugBug] Some disk related questions..

[Philippe B échamp]

-- 
Philippe Béchamp
bechamp at web.net

Hi all !

Would someone with knowledge of partitioning and the boot process answer
the following questions ? I'm trying to do some risky operations and I
think I have mostly figured everything out but I need some confirmations.
I did my research but there aren't that many texts on this kind of thing..

I think the following are true, are they ?

* An MBR is always at the absolute start of a disk, before the start of
any partition.

* An MBR always contains one and just one partition table.

* Partition tables are exclusively located in the MBR.

* A boot sector is always at the absolute begining of a partition.

And some questions:

* Are all MBRs the same length, non-withstanding which OS ?

* How long is a Linux MBR (62X512 bytes I think ?) ? A DOS MBR ?

* Which program is responsible for writting the boot sectors of partitions ?

* If a partition is non-bootable, is there always a boot sector anyways
(assuming it's Linux or DOS, not swap or something) ?

* Where physically is the extended partition information stored ?

And a final, a bit unrelated one:

Does the bs= parameter in 'dd' make any difference to the resulting file ?
I think it only changes the way the copy is done, not what is written ??


Thanks !!

Philippe.

-- 
Philippe Béchamp
bechamp at web.net