Why in world Vista partition shows as FAT16 (and not ntfs) ??

[vois22]

Hello --

I bought an Acer desktop with Vista Home Basic. This is a pre-installed image of Vista Basic -- that is, there is an OEM restore/imaging partition at the beginning of the hard drive.

There is no DVD which came with the computer (which sucks). At anytime I want to go back to factory settings, I just invoke this imager/partition at boot, and she images right back to "never fired up" status.

To do this, it overwrites the C: drive while re-imaging, and lays down Vista on that C: drive.

Now it's my understanding that Vista must be installed on an NTFS partition. Period.

Yet, very consistently, when I use any Linux-based LiveCD to look at fdisk, it shows me the following. Keep in mind, this is the partition where Vista resides:
/dev/sda2 boot ID=6 FAT16

This really surprises me. Why is it not ID=7 hpfs/ntfs ????????

Why does it matter? Because this causes big time grief for even commercial cloners and ghosters. It won't copy that partition. As I type, I am using Linus-based System Rescue LiveCD to implement a dd command for copying bit-by-bit, but I don't know what I'll get (if it will have worked) until later when I try to do a restore from my external drive.

Thanks for any guidance and understanding!

[budman7]

I have noticed this for a long time with live linux cds.
I guess the developers of those dstros don't think Windows is important enough to identify correctly.
But, if you try to edit that FAT16 partition, I think you will find that you will need the ntfs-3g program ro do so.

[vois22]

budman,

Thanks for the reply.

In Gparted (operating from a GParted LiveCD) the Vista partition appears as NTFS. So that does give me a clue, and here is that clue:
--> The re-imager OEM implementation (which resides quietly on the first partition of the internal hard drive) is the culprit which sets a file system ID of 6. What's kind of funny is that this re-imager implementation using a trimmed down OS of Windows XP to do its work!

The ID for the partition doesn't affect which Windows operating system is installed (obviously, proof above).

So I don't think it has to do anything with any Linux distro, the distro's are all using fdisk command structure to simply read the data from the mbr and report it back.

By the way, I did manage to get a successful bit-to-bit copy of the Vista partition (using Linux dd) onto my external drive. I have not yet been able to boot to the external, though.

Then, I reformated the wayward ID=6 internal Vista partition (using GParted) as ID=7 NTFS so that it is properly ID'd. Right now I am copying back the Vista partition bit-by-bit from external drive to internal -- we'll see if this works. And if it does, I'll end up with the Vista file system on a partition which IDs correctly as NTFS.

The reason I am bothering with all of this, in case you are wondering, is to have a "fresh first time use" copy of Vista partition always on my external drive. I can -- if this venture were to fail -- always use the OEM re-imager, but it takes soooooo long to reimage and then start Vista for the "first" time. I am hoping I can just get a bootable backup for safety's sake.



Thank you again.