NEWS.TXT
1.3.4 2021-02-20 by Tom Ehlert
when creating logical drives, using 'use maximum size',
FDISK would allow to create an additional partition of size 0,
trashing the complete disk partitioning.
hopefully fixed.
1.3.3 2021-02-09 by Tom Ehlert
FDISK would not show volume labels if the partitions aren't on
a cylinder boundary. fixed.
Current Stable Production Release: 1.3.2 by Tom Ehlert
1.3.2 fixes a couple of bugs in 1.3.1 that were detected by Japheth
a) without .INI file, FDISK would simply exit with
"Error reading hard disk. Addressed sector not found."
b) FDSIK would create overlapping partitions when other partitions
were not starting on virtual Cylinder boundaries, as windows or linux
partitioners do.
c) a bug when a USB memory card reader with empty slot would create
'valid' drives with 0 sectors, 0 heads
d) on GPT partitioned disks, the protection partition was not proper detected
Note: For any changes prior to version 1.0, please see history.txt.
Current Version:
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04/06/2003 Some clean-ups of help screens.
Fixed a bug that prevented all FAT32 boot sector information
from being erased when a new partition is created that starts
at the exact same location as an old FAT32 partition.
Future changes planned for Version 2.0.0:
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TO-DO: Complete addition of international language support.
Future changes planned for Version 1.8.0:
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TO-DO:
Future changes planned for Version 1.6.0:
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TO-DO: Increased the extended partition buffer size by 1 to support
24 extended partitions.
Future changes planned for Version 1.4.0:
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TO-DO: Investigate the possibility of resetting the boot sector
bytes 510 and 511 to 0x00 instead of filling the boot
boot sector(s) with 0xf6 when creating a partition. This
would make a file system easier to repair if a drive was
accidentally fdisked.
TO-DO: Fixed a bug that prevented option 5 from being displayed,
????? on the main menu, when more than one physical drive exists.
TO-DO: Continued adding support for international languages.
TO-DO: Check for fdisk functionality if the only hard disk is on
the second IDE controller.
TO-DO Fixed the ported BootEasy code.
TO-DO: Regression Testing
1. Maxtor 245MB hard disk (7245AT)
2. Fujitsu 20GB hard disk (MPF3204AT)
3. Western Digital 180GB hard disk (WD1800JB)
TO-DO: Fix drive label modification issues.
TO-DO Fix partition start and end corruption problems with
some non-dos partition types.
Version History:
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Version 1.2.0 Improved the algorithms that calculate the partition size by
03/04/2003 percentage, when utilizing the command-line.
Improved the command-line help screens.
Fixed the bug that prevented the deletion of non-dos
partition types.
Version 1.1.4 Replaced the Delete_Logical_Drive() function with the code
BETA RELEASE from version 1.01 and modified the function to work with the
12/11/2002 new partition buffer structure. The function that this code
replaces caused massive drive corruption.
Verified that the creation of partitions, by percentage
within the interactive user interface, now results in
partitions that have the same size as those from "other"
partition management utilities.
Fixed the bug that prevented non-dos logical drives from
being displayed with the /dump and /info command-line option.
Maximum 2GB FAT16 partition size is now 2047MB, for
reasons of compatibility. 4GB FAT16 partitions now have
a maximum size of 4095MB, also for reasons of compatibility.
Extensive testing was performed with the following hard
drive: Fujitsu 20GB hard disk (MPF3204AT)
Version 1.1.3 Usage percentages, within the interactive user interface,
BETA RELEASE are now displayed correctly and add up to 100%.
12/10/2002
The Determine_Free_Space() code from version 1.01 has been
modified to work with the new partition buffer structures
and merged into the code. This has been done do to reports
of partition overlapping problems that people have been
experiencing with the newer beta releases. Since the
old Determine_Free_Space() function has been proven to work
without any partition overlaps, it was easier to merge that
function as opposed to fixing the new function.
Version 1.1.2 Modified the partitioning algorithms and free space
BETA RELEASE computations, to create partitions, so that they are 100%
11/30/2002 compatible with "other" partitioning utilities when creating
partitions by size. Similar modifications still need to be
made when creating partitions by percentage.
Fixed a bug with the /auto switch that appears when there is
still free space left on the hard drive after 24 partitions
have been created. Before this bug was fixed, a buffer
overflow was possible on larger hard disks. The program
would keep attempting to create partitions even after Z:
was passed because it was formerly programmed to keep
creating partitions until all space was used. In order to
fix this problem, Determine_Drive_Letters() has been
modified so that it now returns the ASCII code for the last
logical drive letter created.
Fixed a major drive lettering bug in the
Determine_Drive_Letters() function.
The /REBOOT command-line option now calls the
Write_Partition_Tables() function. If no changes have been
made, this function simply returns.
Fixed a bug that resulted in the /LOG command-line option
creating the wrong partition type.
Some regression testing was performed with the following
hard drives while setting the version emulation to 4 and 98:
1. Maxtor 245MB hard disk (7245AT)
Version 1.1.1 The versioning numbers have been slightly modified. The
BETA RELEASE version number format is now x.y.z. Where x is the major
11/10/2002 version number, y is the minor version number, and z is the
release number. If y is an even number, the release is
considered stable. Otherwise, if y is an odd number, the
release is a beta version.
Cleaned up some source code.
Removed "FreeDOS MBR" message from normal MBR.
Fixed a bug that caused the partition tables to be written
twice when exiting the interactive user interface.
Continued adding support for international languages.
Fixed a bug that resulted in an incorrect maximum number of
hard disks being reported by the
Get_Hard_Drive_Parameters() function.
Fixed an overflow bug that erased ext int 0x13 flag
information by writing 0's to next hard disk's buffer.
This bug tended to nullify support for > 8GB hard disks when
they were not the first and only hard disk available.
Hard disk partition information displayed by the /status
command and via option 5 of the interactive user interface
now supports sizes up to 999,999 MB.
Modified the introductory warning message, for large disk
support, that stated that FreeDOS will be unable to access
FAT32 partitions. Since FreeDOS is now able to access FAT32
partitions, FreeDOS has been removed from the warning
message.
Fixed usage percentage displayed for logical drives in the
extended partition.
Fixed logical drive usage percentage displayed when using
the /dump switch from the CLI (command line interface).
Restored original command-line parsing code. The new code
limited the capability to stack command line switches on
one command line.
Restored original environment scanning and fdisk.ini parsing
code. The new code did not properly scan the environment
and, when compressed, did not reduce the size of the
executable any appreciable size.
All changes prior to Version 1.0 are now recorded in
history.txt.
There is now a util directory that will contain all batch
files necessary to simplify maintenance.
\util\makezip.bat is a modified mkzip.bat file, created by
Tom Ehlert, that creates the distribution zip file.
\util\devprep.bat prepares Free FDISK for development by
preparing CATS and the bootloaders.
\util\zipprep.bat copies the fdisk.exe file into the
\program directory and prepares the source tree for
being zipped.
Version 1.10 This release and all future releases of Free FDISK will be
BETA RELEASE identifiable as production or beta software by the tenths
7/24/2002 place of the version number. For example, version 1.1
would be a beta release, version 1.2 would be a production
release, version 1.313a would be a beta release, etc.
Started utilizing CATS 3.96 for international language
support. International language support will be completed
in a future release.
Tom Ehlert has ported BootEasy to NASM. The bootcode.h file
is no longer used.
Added a define statement, and additional code, that can
be used to turn on various text messages indicating that
a release is a beta version.
The /MBR switch writes the standard boot loader and the
/BMBR switch writes the BootEasy boot loader.
Version 1.04 Not a public release.
7/10/2002
Bug fixes for version 1.03, submitted by Tom Ehlert.
Version 1.03 Not a public release.
6/20/2002
More changes submitted by Tom Ehlert.
A new bootloader has been written, by Tom Ehlert, that
boots the active partition.
Version 1.02 Not a public release.
4/11/2002
Floating point variables have been removed, by Tom Ehlert.
As a result, the size of the compressed executable has been
reduced by approximately 10k.
Tom Ehlert has also modified the help system such that if
the help information has been redirected to a file, the
/nopause switch is no longer necessary to prevent the
redirected text from being paused.
Miscellaneous code modifications and optimizations
by Tom Ehlert.
Tom Ehlert has also cleaned up some of the source code
through the use of pointers to structures instead of
utilizing the raw structures.
Version 1.01 Due to the danger of the /CLEAR and /CLEARALL commands,
4/9/2002 the drive number is now a required parameter with these two
commands. If the drive number is not entered, the program
will abort. If the program aborts, an error level 9 is
returned.
The program will now abort if a size >0 is not specified
when using the /PRI, /PRIO, /LOG, LOGO, and /EXT commands.
If the program aborts, an error level 9 is returned.
Added the CHECKEXTRA option to the fdisk.ini file. By
disabling this feature, Free FDISK will no longer check
for an extra cylinder of drive space past the reported
end of the drive. This option was added to accomodate
hard drives with a flaw in the firmware and defaults to ON.
Version 1.01 Not a public release
Pre 1
3/22/2002 Fixed a bug that resulted in FAT32 partitions being formatted
at a former partition size and not at the current partition
size. This was due to the backup boot sector not being
cleared when the drive was repartitioned.
Fixed many "one-off" bugs in the Determine_Free_Space()
function.
Modified the partition creation functions to more
aggressively utilize all of the space on a hard disk.
Version 1.0 Fixed a bug that resulted in option 5, on the main menu, not
11/20/2001 being displayed if a second drive is being emulated.
Fixed a bug that created partitions that were larger than the
allowed size, for the partition type.
Fixed a bug that resulted in an incorrect size, of an
emulated drive, being displayed when the version <= 6.
Fixed a bug that displayed an incorrect maximum available
space if 4 GB FAT 16 partition support was enabled.