Re: [gentoo-user] Resizing ntfs creates a hidden partition

[Mick <michaelkintzios@gmail.com>]

On Saturday 20 February 2010 13:59:38 Stefan Schulte wrote:
> Hi Mick,
> 
> AFAIK the asterisk behind the partition just indicates, that it is not
> aligned to a cylinder boundary. I think this doesnt have any effect (or
> maybe some old OS like DOS depend on it). If you use cfdisk for
> partitioning you can avoid that by given the space in c(ylinders). e.g.
> New Partition with a size of '100c'.
> 
> I guess your hidden partition has something to do with Windows
> behaviour, because if you install Windows and create partitions during
> the installation process, it also creates an extra 8MB partition.
> Maybe gparted adopted that behaviour.
> 
> But I can't tell you the reason why. Some people say it's for temp data
> (which I doubt) and others say it's used to store metadatas if the user
> decides to use flexible disks or software RAIDs.
> 
> I just can say that windows is running fine without it on my computer,
> because i decided to partition with cfdisk before running the
> installation.

Thank you both for your responses.  I failed to notice that gparted now has a 
handy 'align on cylinder' tick box.  That's what I think shifts partitions 
along until there is alignment with the cylinder boundary.
-- 
Regards,
Mick