Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!watmath!iuvax!bobmon
From: bobmon@iuvax.cs.indiana.edu (RAMontante)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc
Subject: Re: Recover from FDISK? (HELP!)
Message-ID: <24673@iuvax.cs.indiana.edu>
Date: 16 Aug 89 15:06:32 GMT
References: <36300057@iuvax> <1012@virtech.UUCP> <[1524.4]comp.ibmpc;1@point.UUCP>
Reply-To: bobmon@iuvax.cs.indiana.edu (RAMontante)
Organization: malkaryotic
Lines: 15

wek@point.UUCP (Bill Kuykendall) <[1524.4]comp.ibmpc;1@point.UUCP> :
-It seems to me that this must vary with the version of 'DOS.  Compaq DOS
-3.31 most definitely reinitializes the FAT when fdisk is run.  On the other
-hand, I'm certain that I've recovered hard disks that had been fdisk'ed in
-the past.  

Good point, although it isn't the DOS version per se.  My Zenith v3.21
release, for example, doesn't supply `fdisk'; instead it supplies
`part', and the documentation says "Any changes you make to the
partition table with PART can destroy all existing data on your hard
disk."  On the other hand, a partitioning program that I played with as
part of Minix certainly did not remove data; at one point I was
repartitioning the disk repeatedly while trying to install Minix, and
the files in the DOS partition stayed put even if I accidentally frobbed
that partition as well as the others.