Data all gone

Previously J. Clarke <jclarke.RemoveThis@nospam.invalid> wrote:
 > Arno Wagner wrote:

[...]

 > How large is the partition table? I was under the impression that it was
 > less than a single sector, so there's no way to rewrite only part of it.

It is a bit obscure: There is room for 4 partitions in the partition
table space the boot/root sector od the disk. You can put primary or
extended partition entries in each. If it is an extended partition
entry, the the entry is actually a pointer to another sector, namely
the root (first) sector of the extended partition. That sector has in
turn a pointer to the root sector of the first partition in the
extended partition in its first (second?) entry. The other s are
unused.

For the partitions within the extended partition, there is one entry
in the root (first) sector of that partition and one entry that points
to the root sector of the next partition in the extended partition and
so on. The other two entries in these linked sectors are empty.

In a sense this whole obscure construct forms the "partition table".
I once traced this with a disk editor. That was a long time
ago, but I think it is still done this way.

Arno
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