Re: LBA48 partitioning scheme

On Tuesday 31 May 2005 00:57, [email protected] wrote:
> >> Why did you derive another partitioning system,
> >> rather than come up with a creative way to use a PC-style
> >> partition table?
> >>
> >>ie the old 'primary/secondary' stuff?
>
> I wanted something 'simple' that would handle more than 4 partitions
> without getting into 'extended' partitions.  My LBA48/partition 'patches'
> were meant to be simple patches applied to the Xbox kernel - I didn't want
> (nor did I see any need for) any complicated code in there.  What I
> implemented worked via a single read of the 'boot sector' - no opening of
> individual partitions to find 'extended' partitions/etc.
>
> I didn't see any reason to carry-over 'baggage' from the DOS partition
> format (with it's original 4-partition limitation, and (IMO) "hacks"
> applied to extend that with backward-compatibility).  There's nothing like
> DOS on Xbox to be backward-compatible with - so (IMO) no need for using the
> DOS-compatible partition table used on PC's.

Pretty much what I'd guessed about why you did it that way.

> Since nobody else was coming up with a solution at the time, and I saw a
> need for something more intelligent than just giving "everything above 8GB
> to drive F: or Linux", I devised a very simple/straightforward partition
> table.  It's now implemented in most (or all) LBA48 versions of the Xbox
> kernel, as well as Xbpartitioner, so I suppose it's become the "standard"
> for the Xbox.

Can you remember if the xbox OS checks the FATX signature before attempting to 
read/write files to a partition? Been so long since I looked at this stuff.

Just thinking 'cos we're going to be having non-FATX partitions appearing in 
the table for the linux partitions...


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