[Sussex] Label and partition external hard drive

[Steven Dobson]

Hi Fay

On 23/02/11 19:31, 'Fay Zee' wrote:
> But what about the issue of the original partition table having 1.5MB
> of free space at the beginning and my new table not having this?
> Was that a red herring?

I've seen this myself.  I have no idea why they are done that way.

> This disk was acquired through eBay and sold as a reformatted disk by
> someone who seems to sell quite a few.

I don't put a great deal of trust in because they sell a lot of stuff.
That makes them good sales people, not good geeks.

I also expect that most of these people use Windows.  Well I know a
mounted partition shows up on Window (normally as a drive letter, but I
think there are other ways now).  But how are unmounted partitions
found?  That I have no idea.

On *nix it is easy.  There will be an entry in /dev somewhere.  But I
think the real factor is that Linux and the *BSDs are open.  As a
results the tools are free and therefore the best tools can rise to the
top of the tool chain.

This thread is a good example.  You're using cfdisk.  I would recommend
it to anyone as the first partition tool to try.  But there is also
fdisk.  It does the same job, but I find cfdisk easier to use, but there
are times when cfdisk doesn't work but fdisk does, so I'm glad that both
are there.

What is the best partition tool on Windows?  I don't mean the most
common, I mean the easiest, simplest, most reliable.  There are probably
quite a number out there.  But in the commercial environment money
talks.  So if the best tool also cost money then not everyone will own
it and so magazines and blogs will use the one provided by the OS,
substandard thou it might be, because that is the one everyone will have.

I seam to have jumped on my soap box again!  :-)

Steve
-- 
Steve "Dobbo" Dobson