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Clear msftres and other GPT 'flags' set by GNU parted
Authored by: skodabenz on Wed, Jun 24 2009 at 2:03AM PDT
The problem is caused by the presence of the following code in (parted-source-dir)/libparted/labels/gpt.c file :

if (strncmp (fs_type->name, "fat", 3) == 0
|| strcmp (fs_type->name, "ntfs") == 0) {
gpt_part_data->type = PARTITION_MSFT_RESERVED_GUID;
return 1;
}

(lines 1221 to 1224)

This code is completely unnecessary and it doesn't make sense. According to Microsoft, "Microsoft Reserved" partition is unformatted and it is as of now only used if a disk is converted from basic disc to a dynamic disc using Windows under GPT. Otherwise this partition is not needed at all for using only basic discs. Also since it is unformatted, it is not related to any filesystem whatsoever (although any partition whether it is formatted or not , can be marked as a msftres partition, but it will always remain unused by Windows unless the disc is converted to dynamic type), so marking any FAT (or vfat or FAT32 etc.) or NTFS partition as "Microsoft Reserved" is absurd. According to Microsoft, any partition used for storing Data (FAT or FAT32 or NTFS - in case of Windows) SHOULD NOT BE MARKED AS "MICROSOFT RESERVED", they should be "BASIC DATA PARTITION" only (except any FAT parttion can also be marked as EFI SYSTEM PARTITION).

If those of you who read this, compile parted on their own, I request you to simply delete the above mentioned code from gpt.c file and then compile parted. I also request parted developers to remove the above code from gpt.c file by the next version.

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