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Sun Feb 20 16:52:19 PST 2005


Each partition table sector contains 4 partition descriptors. A partition
descriptor may be of type 5 (DOS extended partition), f (W95 extended
partition) or 85 (Linux extended partition), in which case it points to
another partition table sector. In this way, we obtain a quaternary tree of
partitions. Linux accepts 85 as a synonym for 5 - this is useful if one wants
to have extended partitions past the 1024 cylinder limit (to prevent DOS fdisk
from crashing or hanging). Windows 95 uses f for LBA mapped extended
partitions. Thus, an extended partition is not a partition containing data,
but is a box containing other partitions. Nevertheless, the partition table
sector that starts an extended partition has enough room left to contain a
boot loader like LILO, so that it is possible to boot an extended partition.

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