		    ͻ
		          EFDISK v3.5 DOCUMENTATION      
		     Copyright (c) 1997-2008 Nagy Daniel 
		          Release date: 04-17-2008       
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Ŀ
 CONTENTS 


		Disclaimer............................ 1

                Copyright............................. 2

		Introduction.......................... 3

		Features.............................. 4

		Requirements.......................... 5

		Usage (IMPORTANT!).................... 6

                Partition types....................... 7

		History............................... 8

		Technical information................. 9

		Contact, about the author............ 10


Ŀ
 DISCLAIMER  1 


        Using this program comes without any warranty. The author
        and distributors will not accept responsibility for any
        damage incurred directly or indirectly through use of this
        program.
        Use at your own risk!


Ŀ
 COPYRIGHT  2 


        All copyrights are exclusively owned by the author, Nagy Daniel.
        This program is a part of the MasterBooter package. Distributing it
        separately is not allowed. You can distribute the whole unmodified
        shareware MasterBooter package only with all files intact!
        Distributing the registered version is not allowed!
        For other distributing information see the MasterBooter
        documentation.


Ŀ
 INTRODUCTION  3 


        EFDISK is a disk partitioning program. With EFDISK you can create
        primary partitions on your harddisks.
        EFDISK supports many partition types, however you cannot make
        logical drives and extended partitions with it. The original
        FDISK program doesn't allow you to create more than one primary
        partition per harddisk. EFDISK allows four, therefore it's a
        powerful tool to help installing more operating systems on your PC.
        The registered version can create partitions by automatically
        calculating the remaining free space. This can be extremely useful
        for system administrators, schools and computer store employees.
        EFDISK is a support program of MasterBooter, not a standalone
        utility.


Ŀ
 FEATURES  4 


        - Displaying partition information of all drives in your system

        - Creating or editing partitions (causes data loss!)

        - Compatibility with all partition types, including:
             FAT16, FAT32, HPFS, NTFS, Hidden FAT, hidden NTFS/HPFS,
             Ext2FS, Linux swap, etc...

        - Easy-to-use user interface

        - Usable via command line options (use /? option for help)


Ŀ
 REQUIREMENTS  5 


     - 80386 processor or up
     - DOS or Win9x/ME
     - At least one harddisk
     - Keyboard
     - VGA adapter


Ŀ
 USAGE  6 


     Warning: Playing with partitions is a risky job! Use this program
              only if you know what you're doing! Be sure to read the
              whole documentation first!

              BEFORE REPARTITIONING A DRIVE, CREATE A RESCUE FLOPPY!!!

     1) Installation

        You can copy these files (this docs and the executables) together
        wherever you like. This program doesn't need any additional
        configuration. Just execute it.
        Copying this program to a system floppy can be useful.


     2) Usage information

          For safety:
          0) BACK UP ALL IMPORTANT DATA!
          1) Make a system disk by typing: 'format a: /s'
          2) Run the program MRESCUE.COM. Choose the 'Create rescue disk'
             option. It will copy important information about your disks
             and the MRESCUE.COM itself to floppy, so you can restore your
             previous configuration later if necessary.
          3) Now you can safely run EFDISK and make changes. If anything
             goes wrong, boot from the floppy you've just created, run
             MRESCUE.COM and choose 'Restore original configuration'.
             This will reset all modifications.
             Note that a new partition must be formatted before usage!
             Send me a mail if something is not working, and write
             all steps you've done unless I won't be able to correct the
             problem.

        EFDISK gathers information about your harddisks and partitions.
        It shows a list of all primary partitions of all harddisks and
        their parameters. From this list you can choose the partition
        entry you want to change.
        In the upper right window, the program shows the number of cylinders,
        heads and sectors of each harddisk.

        The highlighted row can be moved with the up/down arrow keys.
        Press ENTER to change the parameters of the highlighted partition.
        All data in a changed partition will be lost!
        After pressing ENTER on a partition, EFDISK asks several questions:
        1. The hexadecimal type ID of the partition. EFDISK will show you
           the most common types and IDs. Type the value, and press ENTER.
           Check out section 7 in this documentation for more types.
        2. Starting cylinder number of partition (the minimum is 0).
           If the previous partition is ending on cylinder 'x' then set
           this to 'x+1'. This number is decimal. Type and press ENTER.
        3. Ending cylinder number or size of partition. EFDISK will show you
           the maximum cylinder number available for the actual harddisk.
           If you append an 'm' to the entered value, EFDISK will treat
           that as the partition size in megabytes. If you omit the 'm'
           character, the number will be treated as a cylinder value.
           This number is also decimal. Type and press ENTER.

        The number of heads and sectors per track values are determined
        automatically for each disk, you don't have to mess with them.

        Pressing SPACE will activate/deactivate the highlighted partition.

        Pressing DEL will clear the whole highlighted entry.

        Pressing 'h' over a FAT/NTFS partition will cause hiding/unhiding it.
        This can be important if OS/2 is used, or if you don't want
        Win9x/ME/NT to recognize other primary FAT/NTFS partitions.
        Hiding a partition doesn't have any effect with Win2000/XP/2003.
        You can use the Disk Administrator utility of these systems
        to delete the assigned drive letters you don't want to access.

        After preparing all partition entries, press F10 to save the new
        partition table to the harddisk.

!!   Usage note: - EFDISK doesn't check for partitioning errors! It's not an
!!                 'intelligent' program. You have total freedom to set all
!!                 parameters, even if they are incorrect or useless!
                

     3) Command line usage

        Since v2.1 EFDISK can be used with command line options. With
        command line options, one can create, delete and activate partitions,
        and hide/unhide primary FAT/NTFS partitions. Using command line
        options can be very useful for system administrators,
        hardware/software stores or schools.
        Note that the changes will take effect only after a reboot.

        If there was an error, then the return value is 1, else 0.

        The syntax is:
        efdisk command <partition_number> [harddisk_number]

        Defining the partition number is always compulsory except for the
        'delall' and 'mbr' commands, where it must be omitted.
        The commands are:
        /create type starting_cyl. ending_cyl. - to create
        /crsize type size_in_MB                - to create (registered only)
        /delete                                - to delete
        /delall                                - to delete all
        /activate                              - to activate
        /hidefat                               - to hide primary FAT
        /hident                                - to hide primary NTFS/HPFS
        /unhidefat                             - to unhide primary FAT
        /unhident                              - to unhide primary NTFS/HPFS
        /mbr                                   - to install new MBR loader
        /?                                     - to get help

        - Only one command is allowed per command line.
        - The type is hexadecimal, the cylinders are decimal numbers.
        - Partition number is a number from 1 to 4. Only one partition number
          is allowed per command (don't use this parameter for delall and mbr
          commands).
        - Disk number is a number from 1 to 4. If omitted, the default is 1.
          Only one disk number is allowed per command.
        - The /crsize command calculates the new partition's starting
          cylinder from the previous partition's ending cylinder. Therefore
          always be sure, that the previous partition entry defines an
          already existing valid partition, or you will loose your data!
          If the new partition is the first partition, then the
          starting cylinder number will be 0.
          This command is only available in the registered version.
        - The /mbr and /delall commands only need a harddisk number
          (the default is the primary master harddisk if not specified)
        - The /mbr command unhides all hidden primary partitions.


        Examples:
        --------
        - To create a primary BIGDOS partition (type 6) with starting
          cylinder 12, ending cylinder 265 in the 3rd partition entry on
          the 2nd harddisk, type:
          efdisk /create 6 12 265 3 2
        - to create a 2000MB FAT32 partition in the 2nd entry (1st must be
          a valid existing partition) on the 1st harddisk, type:
          efdisk /crsize b 2000 2   (registered version only)
        - To delete the 2nd partition on the 1st harddisk, type:
          efdisk /delete 2   (note that the disk number can be omitted if 1)
        - To delete all partitions on the 3rd harddisk, type:
          efdisk /delall 3
        - To hide the 4th partition (must be FAT) on the 1st harddisk type:
          efdisk /hidefat 4


        Creating automatically calculated partitions (registered version only):
        ----------------------------------------------------------------------

           The registered version can automatically calculate partition size
           upon creating one. The 'create' command accepts '*' characters
           instead of the starting and the ending cylinder numbers.

           In this case the starting cylinder number will be the ending
           cylinder number of the previous partition + 1, and the ending
           cylinder number will be the maximum cylinder number of the harddisk.
           Because of this, all partitions beyond an automatically
           calculated one will be lost!

           If you specify 1 for the partition number then the starting
           cylinder number will be 0 (because there is no previous existing
           partition) so this command will create a partition which will
           use all harddisk space. In this case, all data will be lost
           after formatting this partition!

           For example:
           efdisk /create 6 * * 3 2
           The above command will create a BIGDOS partition in the third entry
           on the second harddisk, with the automatic calculation of the
           starting and the ending cylinders using all remaining space after
           the second partition.

           This feature can be useful when there is a need for creating
           hundreds of same systems with different harddisk sizes, which
           already contain a fixed sized smaller partition (for example
           Compaq machines with a diagnostic partition).

           Notes about automatic partition creation:
           - Never leave off a single '*'! If you use '*' then both cylinder
             numbers must be '*' characters. It is not possible to define
             either cylinder number and use '*' for the other, i.e.
             'efdisk 6 12 * 2 1' is not valid.
           - If the partition number is 2, 3 or 4, then the starting cylinder
             value will be calculated from the ending cylinder value of the
             previous partition. If the partition number is 1 then the
             starting cylinder number will be 0.
           - Be sure that there are no existing partitions after an
             automatically created one, because it will use all remaining
             space, therefore partitions after the automatically created one
             would be erased.


     4) General notes about partitioning

        - If the computer doesn't boot after using EFDISK or other
          partitioners don't recognize partitions created with EFDISK,
          then do an 'efdisk /mbr' command. This problem may occur with
          brand new harddisks, which don't contain the proper loader
          routine and the 0AA55h MBR signature in their MBRs yet.
          This command erases an existing boot menu!
        - If there's data in the other partitions of your harddisk than
          the partitions you'll change then create backups of your
          partition tables with MRESCUE for safety.
        - You can have only one active partition in your harddisk's
          partition table. If you activate a partition, EFDISK will
          automatically clear the other partition's 'active' flag.
        - There's no point to activate extended partitions
        - hiding/unhiding works only with primary FAT, NTFS/HPFS partitions
!!      - Don't use EFDISK to resize, move or change the type of such
!!        existing partitions that contain data you need! Once you alter
!!        an entry (except activating or hiding/unhiding it) the data
!!        in that partition will be lost!


Ŀ
 PARTITION TYPES  7 


        These are the currently known partition types. These values are
        from Ralph Brown's interrupt list. (A big thanks goes to him for
        maintaining that impressive documentation!)

        ID      Name
              
        00h     empty
        01h     DOS 12-bit FAT
        02h     XENIX root file system
        03h     XENIX /usr file system (obsolete)
        04h     DOS 16-bit FAT (up to 32M)
        05h     DOS 3.3+ extended partition
        06h     DOS 3.31+ Large File System (16-bit FAT, over 32M)
        07h     QNX
        07h     OS/2 HPFS
        07h     WinNT NTFS
        07h     Advanced Unix
        08h     OS/2 (v1.0-1.3 only)
        08h     AIX bootable partition, SplitDrive
        08h     SplitDrive
        08h     Commodore DOS
        08h     DELL partition spanning multiple drives
        08h     QNX 1.x and 2.x
        09h     AIX data partition
        09h     Coherent filesystem
        09h     QNX 1.x and 2.x
        0Ah     OS/2 Boot Manager
        0Ah     OPUS
        0Ah     Coherent swap partition
        0Bh     Win95 OSR2 with 32-bit FAT
        0Ch     Win95 OSR2 with 32-bit FAT (LBA-mode INT 13 extensions)
        0Eh     LBA VFAT (same as 06h but using LBA-mode INT 13)
        0Fh     LBA VFAT (same as 05h but using LBA-mode INT 13)
        10h     OPUS
        11h     Hidden 12-bit FAT partition
        12h     Compaq Diagnostics partition (FAT compatible)
        14h     (using Novell DOS 7.0 FDISK to delete Linux Native part)
        14h     Hidden sub-32M 16-bit FAT partition
        16h     Hidden over-32M 16-bit FAT partition
        17h     Hidden HPFS partition
        18h     AST special Windows swap file
        1Bh     Hidden Win95 with 32-bit FAT
        1Ch     Hidden Win95 with 32-bit LBA FAT
        1Eh     Hidden Win95 with LBA BIGDOS
        21h     officially listed as reserved
        23h     officially listed as reserved
        24h     NEC DOS 3.x
        26h     officially listed as reserved
        31h     officially listed as reserved
        33h     officially listed as reserved
        34h     officially listed as reserved
        36h     officially listed as reserved
        38h     Theos v3.2 2GB partition
        39h     Theos v4 spanned partition
        3Ah     Theos v4 4GB partition
        3Bh     Theos v4 extended partition
        3Ch     PowerQuest PartitionMagic recovery partition
        40h     VENIX 80286
        41h     Personal RISC Boot
        41h     Power PC Reference Platform Boot
        42h     SFS (Secure File System) by Peter Gutmann
        45h     EUMEL/Elan
        46h     EUMEL/Elan
        47h     EUMEL/Elan
        48h     EUMEL/Elan
        4Dh     QNX4.x
        4Eh     QNX4.x 2nd part
        4Fh     QNX4.x 3rd part
        4Fh     Oberon
        50h     OnTrack Disk Manager, read-only partition
        51h     OnTrack Disk Manager, read/write partition
        51h     NOVELL
        52h     CP/M
        52h     Microport System V/386
        53h     OnTrack Disk Manager, write-only partition???
        54h     OnTrack Disk Manager (DDO)
        55h     EZ-Drive
        56h     GoldenBow VFeature
        56h     DM converted to EZ-BIOS
        57h     DrivePro
        5Ch     Priam EDisk
        61h     SpeedStor
        63h     Unix SysV/386, 386/ix
        63h     Mach, MtXinu BSD 4.3 on Mach
        63h     GNU HURD
        64h     PC-ARMOUR protected partition
        64h     Novell NetWare 2.xx
        65h     Novell NetWare 3.xx or 4.xx
        67h     Novell
        68h     Novell
        69h     Novell
        70h     DiskSecure Multi-Boot
        71h     officially listed as reserved
        73h     officially listed as reserved
        74h     officially listed as reserved
        75h     IBM PC/IX
        76h     officially listed as reserved
        80h     Minix v1.1 - 1.4a
        81h     Minix v1.4b+
        81h     Linux
        81h     Mitac Advanced Disk Manager
        82h     Linux Swap partition
        82h     Prime
        82h     Solaris x86
        83h     Linux native file system
        84h     OS/2-renumbered type 04h partition (hiding DOS C: drive)
        84h     Hibernation partition
        85h     Linux extended partition
        86h     NTFS volume set
        87h     HPFS Fault-Tolerant mirrored partition
        8Ah     Linux Kernel Partition (used by AiR-BOOT)
        8Eh     Linux Logical Volume Manager partition
        93h     Amoeba file system
        94h     Amoeba bad block table
        99h     DCE376 logical drive
        A0h     IBM Thinkpad hibernation partition
        A0h     Phoenix NoteBIOS Power Management "Save-to-Disk" partition
        A1h     officially listed as reserved
        A3h     officially listed as reserved
        A4h     officially listed as reserved
        A5h     FreeBSD, NetBSD, BSD/386
        A6h     OpenBSD
        A7h     NEXTSTEP
        A9h     NetBSD
        AAh     Olivetti Fat 12 1.44Mb Service Partition
        B1h     officially listed as reserved
        B3h     officially listed as reserved
        B4h     officially listed as reserved
        B6h     officially listed as reserved
        B7h     BSDI file system (secondarily swap)
        B8h     BSDI swap partition (secondarily file system)
        BEh     Solaris boot partition
        C0h     CTOS
        C0h     REAL/32 secure small partition
        C1h     DR DOS 6.0 LOGIN.EXE-secured 12-bit FAT partition
        C4h     DR DOS 6.0 LOGIN.EXE-secured 16-bit FAT partition
        C6h     DR DOS 6.0 LOGIN.EXE-secured Huge partition
        C7h     Syrinx Boot
        CBh     reserved for DRDOS/secured (FAT32)
        CCh     reserved for DRDOS/secured (FAT32, LBA)
        CEh     reserved for DRDOS/secured (FAT16, LBA)
        D0h     REAL/32 secure big partition
        D1h     Old Multiuser DOS secured FAT12
        D4h     Old Multiuser DOS secured FAT16 <32M
        D5h     Old Multiuser DOS secured extended partition
        D6h     Old Multiuser DOS secured FAT16 >=32M
        D8h     CP/M-86
        DBh     CP/M, Concurrent CP/M, Concurrent DOS
        DBh     CTOS (Convergent Technologies OS)
        E1h     SpeedStor 12-bit FAT extended partition
        E3h     DOS read-only
        E3h     Storage Dimensions
        E4h     SpeedStor 16-bit FAT extended partition
        E5h     officially listed as reserved
        E6h     officially listed as reserved
        EBh     BeOS partition
        F1h     Storage Dimensions
        F2h     DOS 3.3+ secondary partition
        F3h     officially listed as reserved
        F4h     SpeedStor
        F4h     Storage Dimensions
        F5h     Prologue multi-volume partition
        F6h     officially listed as reserved
        FDh     Linux raid partition
        FEh     LANstep
        FEh     IBM PS/2 IML
        FFh     Xenix bad block table

Ŀ
 HISTORY  8 


        Version:

        1.1 - First official release in the MasterBooter package

        1.2 - If the starting cylinder of a partition was 0, then the
              'relative starting sector' and 'number of sectors' value
              in the partition table were incorrect. Now they're correct

        1.3 - Fixed a small bug, that sometimes caused incorrect 'number
              of sectors' value

        1.4 - Now the 'Space' key can be used to activate a partition,
              so no need to retype all parameters
            - With large hard drives, sometimes the partition sizes were
              incorrect. Now they are always correct

        1.5 - Added partition deleting. Just press DEL over a partition.
              Setting all partition parameters to zero is the same
            - Now it is possible to set a partition active on the slave disk.
              One partition per disk can be made active. This is very
              useful when partitioning a slave disk, which will be used as
              master in an other PC

        2.0 - Added 'h' key to hide/unhide a FAT partition

        2.1 - Now supporting up to four harddisks
            - Fixed a bug which caused incompatibility with some SCSI disks
            - After writing the new Master Boot Record, pressing ESC will
              quit to DOS (doesn't reboot)
            - Added command line options for creating, deleting, activating
              and hiding partitions (use the /? option for more information)

        2.2 - Fixed a small bug, which occurred at entering the partition ID
            - Added support for hiding/unhiding FAT32
            - Added support for FreeBSD
            - The logical characteristics of the harddisks are shown
              in the upper right window

        2.3 - Now works in Win95 DOS box
            - Added support for many partition types
            - Added /crsize command to create partitions by size
              (registered version only)
            - Registered version can automatically calculate partition sizes
              when creating partitions from command line

        2.4 - Added /mbr command to install the standard DOS MBR loader

        2.5 - Added /print command to print the current partition table
            - Fixed a bug in the /mbr switch
            - Fixed a FAT32 creation bug. FAT32 needs 3 boot sectors...

        2.6 - Added NTFS/HPFS partition hiding (command line too)

        2.7 - SPACE now toggles active flag if a partition is already active
            - The /mbr command unhides hidden partitions

        2.8 - New FAT32 bug fixed
            - Added Oberon support
            - Added BeOS support

        2.9 - Added EBIOS support for huge disks (up to 2 terabytes)

        3.0 - EBIOS bugfixes
            - Cylinder values are now 5 digits long
            - Cleaned up documentation

        3.1 - Pressing ESC is also effective while editing a partition entry
            - Smaller bugfixes

        3.2 - Added internal ZIP drive support (Thanks to Gary A. Johnson!)
            - Partition sizes can be specified in megabytes too

        3.3 - Cosmetic changes
            - Added more partition types

        3.4 - Fixed bug with /create and /crsize commands
            - Added support for huge disks and partitions (2TB)

        3.5 - Hiding/unhiding works for Windows systems
            - /mbr command will unhide all hidden primary partitions


Ŀ
 TECHNICAL INFORMATION  9 


        A harddisk can contain up to four primary partitions. The partition
        table (which resides in the very first sector of your harddisk)
        describes the type, bootability and the starting/ending of the
        partitions.
        In bootable partitions, the first sector is always the so called
        'boot sector' which contains a small OS loader.
        In these partitions you can install any operating system in theory.
        But in the real world some operating systems don't allow you to
        create more than one primary partition, or to boot another operating
        system. So creating multiple primary partitions and choosing the
        operating system at boot time is quite difficult.
        That's why I wrote EFDISK and MasterBooter.

        About FAT types:
        

        There are four types of FAT (File Allocation Table).

        1: FAT12 is now obsolete, used on floppy disks and on partitions
           smaller than 16Mb.
        2: FAT16 is the next step. It can be used if a DOS partition
           is between 16Mb and 32Mb.
        3: BIGDOS is also a 16-bit type, but allows larger partition sizes.
           Plain DOS and Win9x/ME use this type nowadays (OS/2,
           WinNT/2000/XP/2003 and Linux can also be installed over FAT,
           but there is no point for doing that). The maximum partition
           size is 2Gb for DOS and Win9x/ME, and 4 Gb for WinNT/2000/XP/2003.
        4: FAT32 is the newest, it is introduced in Win95 OEM Service
           Release 2. Maximum partition size is 127 Gb. It is used by
           Win9x/ME/2000/XP/2003, WinNT 4.0 cannot recognize it.


        With Win95 OSR2, newer types were introduced to indicate that
        a partition ends beyond the 8 Gb limit. These types are:
        - BIGDOSx (0eh)
        - Extended x (0fh)
        - FAT32x (0ch)
        These types are not recognized by WinNT 4.0!

Ŀ
 CONTACT  10 


        If you have any problems, questions or suggestions you can
        contact me via e-mail.
        Bug reports, ideas are also welcome!

        E-mail address:
        
        support@masterbooter.com
 
        WWW homepage:
        
        http://www.masterbooter.com
