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Current FreeDOS fdisk utility (Users)

posted by Japheth Homepage, Germany (South), 01.01.2021, 20:51

I recently tried FreeDOS's fdisk utility on a real machine and, to say it carefully, IMO this tool needs to be improved.

There are currently 2 binaries delivered in the fdisk package:

- FDISK.EXE, version 1.2.1, dated 4/2003
- FDISK131.EXE, version 1.3.1, dated 11/2008

On the machine was installed a "normal" WD SATA 1TB HD.

Launching FDISK131, it just emits:
"Error reading Hard DIsk! Addressed sector not found"
and exits.

FDISK.EXE starts without error and allows to create a new (primary) partition ( I tried size 8192 MB), but it's unable to correctly calculate the starting sector, resulting in overlapping partitions:

BI  Type                     Sector    Size         MB abs. Start-End
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
80  83 Linux ext2fs                  2048 390701056 190772 2048-390703103
00  0c Prim. DOS (FAT32,LBA)    390703104  16777216   8192 390703104-407480319
00  0c Prim. DOS (FAT32,LBA)    407472660  16787925   8197 407472660-424260584

As it can be seen, partition 2 and 3 do overlapp, sectors 407,472,660-407,480,319 are part of both partitions.

A nasty bug: if "too much" data is written to partition 2, partition3's boot sector/FAT will be overwritten, causing the corresponding drive to "disappear".

Are there any newer versions or does FD v1.3 indeed supply such buggy versions of an elementary tool like FDISK? Hard to believe...

---
MS-DOS forever!

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