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: ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- 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: ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- TO-DO: Complete addition of international language support. Future changes planned for Version 1.8.0: ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- TO-DO: Future changes planned for Version 1.6.0: ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- TO-DO: Increased the extended partition buffer size by 1 to support 24 extended partitions. Future changes planned for Version 1.4.0: ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- 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: ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- 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.