[arch-general] fdisk vs cfdisk... And is my drive borked or what?

[Mauro Santos]

> On a funny note; i read today that fdisk also has an option to "fix" an
> existing partition table (under expert options)...

I did try that once and I won a free system reinstall, maybe I was just
unlucky or the partition table was too messed up.

> Looks like the partition table is stored on the first sector of the
> disk, so restoring a copy of that sector also restores the table.
> But yes; storing a copy of the MBR on an external disk is what i meant.

That will only restore the primary partitions (the extended partition
itself is a primary partition), the location of the logical partitions
inside an extended partition are saved in a different way, check [1] for
a description. With luck, by restoring the extended partition one can
also restore all the logical partitions inside.

> You're right, it wasn't neccesary in this case, but it sometimes happens
> that the order of partitions get messed up. On such occasion it might be
> worthwhile to just recreate the whole table.

As far as I know linux doesn't care if the partition order in the table
is the same as the order on disk but lots of partition managers complain
(and I like it to be nice and ordered). fdisk can create an out of order
layout (at least it did for me once), cfdisk can do that too I think and
gparted is a master at messing with that when doing any operation with
partitions (and thats why, among other reasons, I try to touch gparted
only with a long stick).

Now that we are talking about this I guess it is a good time to share
thoughts/experiences about this, you never know when knowing this things
will prove to be life savers or avoid you from making big mistakes.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extended_boot_record