Issues with the Partition Table & MBR pages [UPDATE]
Posted: Fri Sep 02, 2022 1:42 am
The Partition Table page has a couple of serious issues. It's named as if all the world is a BIOS PC, and it proposes a modification to MBR which distracts from the reference material. (As an LBA newbie, I found the latter confusing until I realised I could just ignore it.)
The MBR page is named appropriately, but has a number of topics. (It's huge.) Its information on the MBR partition table format is a little confused, perhaps overly terse, and is split into 2 top-level sections for some reason.
EDIT: New proposal below
I propose to...
I'd like to hear opinions on all these.
The MBR page improvements are non-destructive, so I'll go ahead with those later.
For completeness, there's one more issue which I can't think how to deal with and I'm not sure needs fixing. The MBR page is named "MBR (x86)" when it applies to IDE disks in PPC Macs and very likely others. This likely goes back to the 90s; when IDE drives first gained the capability to inform the BIOS of their size and C/H/S layout, many would fail if they didn't have an MBR partition table. Perhaps this should just be written as a note at the top of the page.
Oh wait... considering that last point and the sheer size of the MBR page, perhaps MBR Partition Table should be a new page. It's really only the partition table which applies to those other systems. I'll go ahead with improvements within the MBR page; this info can be moved to a new page later.
The MBR page is named appropriately, but has a number of topics. (It's huge.) Its information on the MBR partition table format is a little confused, perhaps overly terse, and is split into 2 top-level sections for some reason.
EDIT: New proposal below
I propose to...
- Improve the MBR page's coverage of the partition table using material from the Partition Table page and perhaps some new material
- Perhaps move the 48-bit LBA proposal to a new page, or perhaps just discard it -- opinions please
- Delete all content from the Partition Table page, replacing it with a disambiguation list linking to MBR, GPT, and optionally other partition types.
I'd like to hear opinions on all these.
The MBR page improvements are non-destructive, so I'll go ahead with those later.
For completeness, there's one more issue which I can't think how to deal with and I'm not sure needs fixing. The MBR page is named "MBR (x86)" when it applies to IDE disks in PPC Macs and very likely others. This likely goes back to the 90s; when IDE drives first gained the capability to inform the BIOS of their size and C/H/S layout, many would fail if they didn't have an MBR partition table. Perhaps this should just be written as a note at the top of the page.
Oh wait... considering that last point and the sheer size of the MBR page, perhaps MBR Partition Table should be a new page. It's really only the partition table which applies to those other systems. I'll go ahead with improvements within the MBR page; this info can be moved to a new page later.