some wii tools can only access the first partition on a drive
this is a problem if your partitions already are in a different order
or if you want to create an aditional partition to be first
most tools to shrink partition leave the free space after the original one too
copying all the data to change the order is possible but takes a lot of time
I would like to try a faster way
there are actually two orders to the partitions
the order in which thier content is stored in on the drive (physical)
and the order in which the pointers to this content are stored (logical)
the canonical way is to have both match
eg:
primary partition 1: 0GB - 900GB
primary partition 2: 900GB - 1000GB
primary partition 3: unused
primary partition 4: unused
the problem with this is that changing the physical order means reading 1TB and writing 1TB
using usb that takes a while
but changing the logical order is done in only 512 Bytes (!)
the idea is to stray from the canonical way and only change the logical order and leave the physical as it is
in most cases this should work and have the order appear different
only partitioning tools might get confused (really bad ones) or feel obliged to "fix" this (but good ones should ask)
eg:
primary partition 1: 900GB - 1000GB
primary partition 2: 0GB - 900GB
primary partition 3: unused
primary partition 4: unused
I would like some knowledgeable people to try this aproach and discuss their findings
I wrote a little tool to demonstrate this
if you can't make heads or tails of what to do with this keep away for now
the code appears to work but curently has almost no saveguards, is really ugly and was only barely tested
IF it works reasonably well I will apply more polish
http://www.unix-ag.uni-kl.de/~t_schmid/partorder/
this is a problem if your partitions already are in a different order
or if you want to create an aditional partition to be first
most tools to shrink partition leave the free space after the original one too
copying all the data to change the order is possible but takes a lot of time
I would like to try a faster way
there are actually two orders to the partitions
the order in which thier content is stored in on the drive (physical)
and the order in which the pointers to this content are stored (logical)
the canonical way is to have both match
eg:
primary partition 1: 0GB - 900GB
primary partition 2: 900GB - 1000GB
primary partition 3: unused
primary partition 4: unused
the problem with this is that changing the physical order means reading 1TB and writing 1TB
using usb that takes a while
but changing the logical order is done in only 512 Bytes (!)
the idea is to stray from the canonical way and only change the logical order and leave the physical as it is
in most cases this should work and have the order appear different
only partitioning tools might get confused (really bad ones) or feel obliged to "fix" this (but good ones should ask)
eg:
primary partition 1: 900GB - 1000GB
primary partition 2: 0GB - 900GB
primary partition 3: unused
primary partition 4: unused
I would like some knowledgeable people to try this aproach and discuss their findings
I wrote a little tool to demonstrate this
if you can't make heads or tails of what to do with this keep away for now
the code appears to work but curently has almost no saveguards, is really ugly and was only barely tested
IF it works reasonably well I will apply more polish
http://www.unix-ag.uni-kl.de/~t_schmid/partorder/