About what is after MBR

NTDEV
1

Hello,

I need to know if I can safely store my data into one of the first 62 reserved sectors after the MBR.

Thank you!

2

…unless somebody as wise as you will store his private data at the same place.

Regards,
Anton A. Kolomyeytsev

-----Original Message-----
From: xxxxx@lists.osr.com [mailto:xxxxx@lists.osr.com] On Behalf Of xxxxx@inocentric.com
Sent: Tuesday, January 22, 2008 12:06 PM
To: Windows System Software Devs Interest List
Subject: [ntdev] About what is after MBR

Hello,

I need to know if I can safely store my data into one of the first 62 reserved sectors after the MBR.

Thank you!

NTDEV is sponsored by OSR

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3

It looks at first to be a simple solution, but it has it’s drawbacks.

Can you guarantee that no one else is doing the same ? For instance,
it’s some years since I last looked in to issues of that space and
found that Microsoft tended to write to a couple of sectors in there.

Also think whether such a solution can work with GPT disks bearing in
mind that Windows can convert MBR to GPT on the fly ?

Mark.

At 10:05 AM 1/22/2008, xxxxx@inocentric.com wrote:

Hello,

I need to know if I can safely store my data into one of the first
62 reserved sectors after the MBR.

Thank you!

4

Thank’s

5

A better idea would be to create a utility partition in the partition table and use that. Windows is pretty good at ignoring partition types it doesn’t recognize now, and you can store it anywhere on the disk, remove it, etc…

You can even shrink existing partitions to create some space for your utility partition as part of setting up the data on the disk, though I’d put that code entirely in user-mode if I were you.

-p

-----Original Message-----
From: xxxxx@lists.osr.com [mailto:xxxxx@lists.osr.com] On Behalf Of xxxxx@inocentric.com
Sent: Tuesday, January 22, 2008 3:27 AM
To: Windows System Software Devs Interest List
Subject: RE:[ntdev] About what is after MBR

Thank’s

NTDEV is sponsored by OSR

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