GPT fdisk Revisions

by Rod Smith, rodsmith@rodsbooks.com

Last Web page update: 4/14/2022

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Note: This page is part of the documentation for my GPT fdisk program.

The following summarizes changes in GPT fdisk's public releases:

• 1.0.9 (4/14/2022)—This version implements some bug fixes and minor improvements:
  • Added support for aligning partitions' end points. This feature affects the default partition size when using n in gdisk; it affects the default partition size in cgdisk; and it's activated by the new -I option in sgdisk. See the programs' respective man pages for details. This feature is intended to help with LUKS2 encryption, which reacts badly to partitions that are not sized as exact multiples of the encryption block size.
  • Added several new partition type codes:
    • FreeBSD nandfs (0xa506)
    • Apple APFS Pre-Boot (0xaf0b)
    • Apple APFS Recovery (0xaf0c)
    • ChromeOS firmware (0x7f03)
    • ChromeOS mini-OS (0x7f04)
    • ChromeOS hibernate (0x7f05)
    • U-Boot boot loader (0xb000)
    • 27 (!) codes for Fuchsia (0xf100 to 0xf11a)
  • Added the ability to build sgdisk and cgdisk for Windows.
  • Created a consolidated Makefile for Linux, FreeBSD, Solaris, macOS, and Windows (both 32- and 64-bit). This should replace the need for separate Makefile.platform files, but for the moment they remain in the project, in case there are problems with the new one. The old platform-specific files are deprecated, though, and are likely to be removed soon.
  • Added a check for too-small disks (most likely to be an issue when trying to use a too-small disk image); program now aborts if this happens.
  • Removed stray debugging code that caused partNum is x to be printed when changing a partition's name with sgdisk.
  • Fixed build problems with recent versions of ncurses.
  • Fixed bug that caused cgdisk to report incorrect partition attributes.
• 1.0.8 (6/9/2021)—This version implements some bug fixes and minor improvements:
  • Fixed double byte swap operation on writing partition label data on big-endian CPUs. This resulted in partition names becoming gibberish on such CPUs. Note that this is distinct from the double byte swap bug fixed in version 1.0.7, which affected reads of partition label data.
  • Added a feature to enable swapping the byte encoding of partition label data to gdisk and sgdisk. This feature can correct for incorrectly-encoded partition names created by GPT fdisk 1.0.7 or earlier on big-endian computers, or if any other partitioning software has a similar bug. This feature is accessed using the b option on the experts' menu in gdisk or by using the -B/--byte-swap-name option in sgdisk. The former prompts for the partition number (unless there's only one) and asks for confirmation. The latter requires a partition number as an option and changes the byte order unconditionally.
  • Added a new type codes (0xbb00) for the Barebox boot loader (GUID 4778ED65-BF42-45FA-9C5B-287A1DC4AAB1).
  • Did some trivial code cleanup.
• 1.0.7 (3/10/2021)—This version implements some bug fixes and minor improvements:
  • Fixed a bug that caused spurious warnings about the partition table header claiming an invalid size of partition entries when reading some MBR disks.
  • Fixed double byte swap operation on partition label data on big-endian CPUs. This resulted in partition names becoming gibberish on such CPUs.
  • Added ARM64 as an architecture for the Mac builds of gdisk and fixparts. The official GPT fdisk binaries of these files for macOS are now "universal" x86-64/ARM64 binaries, so they will run natively on the new M1 (ARM64) Macs. The sgdisk and cgdisk binaries, though, remain built only for x86-64, because they rely on libraries that are not easily built in "universal" form.
  • Added three new type codes:
    • 0x0701 - Microsoft Storage Replica
    • 0x0702 - ArcaOS Type 1
    • 0x8401 - Storage Performance Development Kit (SPDK) block device
• 1.0.6 (1/13/2021)—This version implements some bug fixes and minor improvements:
  • Fixed a bug that could cause a segfault if the GPT header claimed partition entries were oversized.
  • Fixed a bug that could cause a crash if the logical partitions on an MBR disk were mis-numbered.
  • Fixed a bug that caused 32-bit versions of GPT fdisk for Unix-like OSes (including Linux) to fail when handling disks over 4 TiB in size.
  • Fixed FreeBSD compilation, which broke somewhere along the way.
  • Renamed the "Freedesktop $BOOT" partition to "XBOOTLDR partition", as the latter is now the official name used in Freedesktop documentation.
  • Added several new type codes for Freedesktop definitions (0x8312 through 0x831C).
• 1.0.5 (2/17/2020)—This version adds a number of enhancements and bug fixes, and two sad removals:
  • First, the sad news: The UEFI GPT fdisk library hasn't been updated since 2016, and I've found that it no longer compiles gdisk. (Even with the previous release, I had to use a four-year-old Ubuntu 14.04 installation to get it to work; but even that's failed now.) I'm therefore removing the EFI binary of gdisk. The version 1.0.4 binary build should still work, though.
  • Apple seems to no longer support building for 32-bit or "fat" binary targets. As I recently rebuilt my Mac development environment, this means I've been forced to build GPT fdisk for macOS for 64-bit only.
  • I've changed the number of columns in the type code output (the L option in the gdisk menu, and equivalents in sgdisk and cgdisk) from three to two. This should make longer partition descriptors more legible.
  • Partition type description searches are now case-insensitive.
  • It's now possible to exit out of the partition type code listing by typing q at the page-break prompt.
  • When changing a partition type code, the default is now the current type code, rather than a platform-specific code.
  • Multiple new type codes have been added for Freedesktop.org's Discoverable Partitions Specification, Container Linux, and Veracrypt.
  • It's now possible to put the type-0xEE partition last in a hybrid MBR created with sgdisk. (Previously, this was possible via gdisk, but not via sgdisk.) See the sgdisk man page for details.
  • Some small typos and formatting issues have been corrected in man pages.
  • The Makefile has been changed to add $(LDLIBS) support, thus enabling clean static builds.
• 1.0.4 (7/6/2018)—This version provides a number of new features and fixes some theoretical or obscure bugs:
  • A total of 74 new type codes have been added to the program, mostly for Android and Ceph partitions; but one is for Apple's new APFS.
  • Because of the large number of new type codes, I've added a search/filter feature to the type code list function (L on gdisk's main menu or when you're prompted to enter a type code). This search is case-sensitive and filters the results based on the type code's description. Type Linux to see Linux partitions, Apple to see Apple partitions, and so on.
  • A message that had read Creating new GPT entries now adds in memory, so as to clarify that the disk is not being modified.
  • I've updated my Mac environment to macOS 10.13 and the latest development tools. This change necessitated updating some third-party tools, and unfortunately, the popt library I installed didn't support building "fat" (combined 32/64-bit) binaries. Thus, my macOS build of sgdisk is 64-bit only. (I used the brew version of popt, which you'll need if you want to run my sgdisk binary under macOS.) My cgdisk and gdisk builds for macOS remain "fat," and so should run on both 32- and 64-bit installations; but I've not tested on a 32-bit computer. At this point, I'm officially deprecating 32-bit support for all the macOS binaries.
  • GPT fdisk now reports more details about what data structures are damaged when a damaged disk is detected.
  • A number of changes have been made to fix bugs that are theoretical or obscure. See the NEWS file for details.
• 1.0.3 (7/27/2017)—Barely a day after the release of version 1.0.2, I discovered a serious bug that caused gdisk to create improper GPT data structures when partitioning a disk "from scratch." This version fixes that bug. Do not use version 1.0.2!
• 1.0.2 (7/26/2017)—This version provides some new features, several new partition type codes, and one minor bug fix:
  • A stray debug message ("REALLY setting name!") has been removed from sgdisk.
  • On Linux, the p option in gdisk and the -p/--print option in sgdisk now display the model name of the hard disk, when possible. This feature does not yet exist on other OSes.
  • On Linux (with 2.6.32 and later kernels), gdisk and sgdisk can now report both logical and physical sector sizes. This mainly affects the p/-p/--print display, but if you try to set an alignment value that's not a multiple of the ratio of the physical to logical sector size, the program will issue a warning. It also now uses the larger of the specified alignment value or this ratio when checking for improper alignment in the v/-v/--verify operation.
  • A new feature, activated by j on the experts' menu in gdisk or -j/--move-main-table=sector in sgdisk, enables moving the main (primary) partition table from its standard location starting on sector 2. This feature should not be used casually! Its purpose is to open an unallocated gap where some system-on-chip (SoC) computers insist on placing their boot loaders. Moving the partition table results in the first usable sector value also being increased (unless the partition table is shrunk by a corresponding value). The verify operation will warn upon encountering a disk with such a gap.
  • Several new type codes have been added:
  • Four type codes (0xAF06 through 0xAF09) for Apple SoftRAID (Status, Scratch, Volume, and Cache)
  • Two type codes (0xE100 and 0xE101, 7412F7D5-A156-4B13-81DC-867174929325 and D4E6E2CD-4469-46F3-B5CB-1BFF57AFC149) for the Open Network Install Environment (ONIE) boot and configuration partitions, respectively
  • Thirteen type codes (0xA000 through 0xA00C) for Android partitions
  • One type code (0xB300, CEF5A9AD-73BC-4601-89F3-CDEEEEE321A1) for QNX6 (aka QNX Power-Safe) filesystems
• 1.0.1 (10/18/2015)—New type codes, small bug fixes, and changes to the OS X build for OS X 10.11 ("El Capitan") dominate the changes in this version. Bug fixes include one that caused -N/--largest-new to break in sgdisk; a failure of sgdisk to return the correct error code when it encountered a write error; an under-reporting by one sector of the size of partitions in cgdisk's Info display; a problem that caused random crashes on PPC64EL systems (and that might have affected others, too); and a fix of keyboard input glitches in the EFI version of gdisk. Although it might not be considered a bug, I've changed the behavior of the -z/--zap and -Z/--zap-all options to sgdisk so that subsequent changes on the same command line are written to disk. (Previously, subsequent commands would be ignored.) Type code changes include an addition of 0x8307 (69DAD710-2CE4-4E3C-B16C-21A1D49ABED3) for 32-bit ARM Linux root (/) partitions; 0x3900 (C91818F9-8025-47AF-89D2-F030D7000C2C) for Plan 9; 0xBC00 (0311FC50-01CA-4725-AD77-9ADBB20ACE98) for Acronis Secure Zone backup partitions; removal of the old 0xA6601 type code and change of 0xA600 to refer to 824CC7A0-36A8-11E3-890A-952519AD3F61 for OpenBSD disklabels; and a change in the default name of 0xAB00 partitions from Apple boot to Recovery HD, since that's what Apple uses for this type and OS X tends to misbehave if it see another value for this name. I've shifted my Mac build environment from an ancient 10.6 installation to a new one built atop OS X 10.11, LLVM 7.0.0, and popt and ncurses from MacPorts. The binary is now a "fat" (32- and 64-bit) program, rather than 32-bit only, and the package now installs files under /usr/local (which OS X likes), rather than the Unix-standard /usr (which OS X 10.11 now forbids). This final change should make GPT fdisk work better with OS X 10.11; however, that version of OS X includes a new feature, called System Integrity Protection, or "rootless," that makes it impossible for GPT fdisk to save changes to your hard disk. If you encounter this problem, you can disable System Integrity Protection, as described here and here. gdisk provides a pointer to the second site if it detects that it can't write to your disk. Alternatively, you can run GPT fdisk from a Linux emergency disk. Finally, the OS X packages now include uninstall-gdisk and uninstall-fixparts scripts, which remove their programs from both the old and new locations. (Users sometimes ask how to do this, which is more tedious under OS X than in most OSes; and the installation packages now call these scripts to erase the programs from old locations prior to installing new files, to avoid the confusion of having two versions installed simultaneously.)
• 1.0.0 (3/17/2015)—I've decided to move GPT fdisk out of beta status with this release. This change doesn't reflect any major new features; it's simply that the program has been in use for several years now and appears to be pretty reliable. In addition to the change in status, this version includes several new partition type codes: the new 8303, 8304, 8305, and 8306 codes support various Freedesktop.org types; F800 through F805 are for Ceph, 4202 is for Windows Storage Spaces; and A600 and A601 are for OpenBSD (although A600 maps to A500, the FreeBSD disklabel code; it's present mainly to help with MBR-to-GPT conversions). I've added support for compilation with the UEFI GPT fdisk library, which enables creating an EFI binary of gdisk, and I'm distributing such a binary build. I've added the -O/--print-mbr option to sgdisk, which displays the MBR partition table. I've tweaked a couple of information and warning messages to be more accurate or informative (see NEWS for details. Finally, I've fixed a problem that caused gdisk to return with a spurious "1" value.

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• 0.8.10 (3/2/2014)—The previous previous version introduced a bug: The hybrid MBR creation code in gdisk would ignore the second and third partitions to be hybridized. This version fixes that bug. It also fixes a bug that could cause incorrect partition end points to be set on hybridized partitions that spanned the 2³²-sector mark on disks. The program now refuses to create hybridized partitions larger than 2³² sectors. sgdisk refuses to create hybridized partitions that span the 2³²-sector mark, and gdisk issues a warning when asked to create such a partition that is otherwise legal. This version fixes a bug that caused sgdisk to display an incorrect partition number when the user specified an invalid value when hybridizing partitions. Finally, this version enables the use of 0 as a value for a partition number to the -A/--attributes, -c/--change-name, -t/--typecode, and -u/--partition-guid commands if an earlier -n/--new option created a new partition; in this case, 0 refers to that newly-created partition.
• 0.8.9 (2/17/2014)—This version's most visible new feature is three new type codes: 3000 (7412F7D5-A156-4B13-81DC-867174929325) for Open Network Install Environment (ONIE) boot partitions, 3001 (D4E6E2CD-4469-46F3-B5CB-1BFF57AFC149) for ONIE config partitions, and ED01 (BFBFAFE7-A34F-448A-9A5B-6213EB736C22) for Lenovo's ESP-like partition. The verify (v) function now checks for MBR partitions (the 0xEE protective partitions or hybrid MBR partitions) that don't fit on the disk. The GPT-destruction options (z in gdisk, -z and -Z in sgdisk) now wipe out the final few sectors on the disk rather than wherever the backup GPT data are recorded as being. This is done to prevent wiping out data mid-disk, which can otherwise happen if a RAID array is resized in certain ways and the GPT data are not moved prior to wiping the GPT data. The FixParts program had developed a bug in which it complained that the 0xEE partition didn't begin on sector 1; this version fixes that bug. Finally, this version removes the dependency on libicu for UTF-16 support in partition names.
• 0.8.8 (10/14/2013)—This version has a number of small improvements and bug fixes. These include two new type codes: gdisk code 8302, or GUID 933AC7E1-2EB4-4F13-B844-0E14E2AEF915, which is used by Freedesktop.org to auto-mount /home partitions; and gdisk code 4100, or GUID 9E1A2D38-C612-4316-AA26-8B49521E5A8B, for the PowerPC PReP boot partition. These type codes increase the number beyond the capacity of an 80x24 display, so there's now a pause and a prompt to continue after displaying 21 lines in gdisk or once the screen fills (in cgdisk), but not in sgdisk. I've fixed a bug that caused sgdisk to segfault when fed a ridiculously large partiton number in its -i/--info option, as well as a bug that could cause the program to hang when generating hybrid MBRs with an extra partition to cover unused space on an over-2TiB disk. I've also tweaked the verification (v) behavior to not report errors when multiple 0xEE partitions are present and to report the presence of a 0xEE partition that's marked as bootable (but this is not counted as an error).
• 0.8.7 (7/8/2013)—Small improvements and bug fixes mark this revision. Three new partition type codes have been added, for freedesktop.org's proposed $BOOT partition (bc13c2ff-59e6-4262-a352-b275fd6f7172; GPT fdisk type code EA00), for the Intel Rapid Start partition (D3BFE2DE-3DAF-11DF-BA40-E3A556D89593, code 8400), and for Haiku's BFS (42465331-3BA3-10F1-802A-4861696B7521; code EB00). I've removed a stray debug message that appeared when reading MBR disks. The "converting MBR to GPT" message has been modified to clarify that changes are being held in memory. The Mac version now works on /dev/rdisk* devices as well as /dev/disk* devices. When used with /dev/rdisk* devices, the partition table can sometimes be re-read without rebooting or unplugging and re-inserting the disk. Finally, cgdisk now supports a -a option, which works similarly to the -a option in cfdisk: It alters partition highlighting from using ncurses reverse video to using a ">" symbol to the left of the partition that's highlighted. This can help users of Braille and other output devices that don't work well with ncurses-style highlighting.
• 0.8.6 (1/9/2013)—This version adds a number of minor features, such as type codes for a Sony System Partition and for VMWare ESX, a new check in the verification code, and support for building under Solaris. It also includes a fix to the hybrid MBR creation support that could cause it to omit the 0xEE partition under some circumstances and a fix for a bug that could cause a crash when passing a partition number of 0 via the -t option.
• 0.8.5 (5/30/2012)—This version makes a couple of minor changes. The one you're most likely to notice is the introduction of new partition type codes for Midnight BSD (A580–A585). I've also changed how the program handles disk errors on writing a GPT table, so that a disk sync is more likely to be performed. This is in response to a problem that I suspect may have been caused by a virus scanner blocking write access to the MBR on a Windows machine.
• 0.8.4 (3/25/2012)—Shortly after releasing 0.8.3, I learned that my Ctrl+D fixes had been inadequate, so I'm releasing this version. Previously, pressing Ctrl+D during entry of most text (partition names or sector numbers, for instance) would lock the program in an infinite loop; and launching gdisk in a Terminal window via sudo and then closing the window would leave gdisk running, consuming CPU time. This version fixes both of these problems.
• 0.8.3 (3/23/2012)—This version offers a few minor improvements and bug fixes. The gdisk program now states the name of the disk that's been modified after a write operation, and a bug has been fixed that caused sgdisk to incorrectly truncate the sizes of over-2TiB partitions on 32-bit (but not 64-bit) systems. This version also improves the handling of Ctrl+D on some systems and includes a fix to enable proper compilation under GCC 4.7.
• 0.8.2 (1/22/2012)—The most noticeable change in this version for most users is the fact that the default value for the first sector, when specifying a partition's start point in gdisk, is now properly aligned. This saves the need for an automatic alignment-related change if the user presses the Enter key for this value. This version also fixes some minor bugs: It handles Ctrl+D properly and it fixes improper handling some some partition tables created by Solaris tools.
• 0.8.1 (10/1/2011)—This is a bug-fix version. It includes a fix that corrects incorrect CRC alerts on disks created by libefi in ZFS, a bug in partition-overlap code for MBR disks, and fixes for some other very obscure problems. The program also now detects and corrects infinite loops in MBR logical partition lists. See the NEWS file for details.
• 0.8.0 (9/10/2011)—This version is most notable for its addition of the cgdisk program to the GPT fdisk family. cgdisk is a cfdisk workalike, and is likely to be an easier introduction to partitioning for new users. This version also provides some minor bug fixes and other changes; see the NEWS file for details.
• 0.7.2 (6/26/2011)—This version adds two important new features: generation of true GUIDs (vs. purely random numbers) in the Windows version (the Linux, FreeBSD, and OS X versions have created true GUIDs for quite a while); and support for a new Linux-specific GUID type code. If you're having problems compiling the software with ICU Unicode support under Linux, FreeBSD, or OS X, you can now disable it; see the README file for details. This version also includes a number of bug fixes; see the NEWS file for details.
• 0.7.1 (3/21/2011)—This version adds support for true UTF-16LE encoding in the partition name fields for the Linux, FreeBSD, and OS X versions of the program. (The Windows version doesn't include this support for reasons detailed in the README.Windows file. Previous versions used a "quick and dirty" method that only worked properly for ASCII characters. This version should now work correctly for all Unicode characters; however, it does depend on proper locale settings and font support. This version also includes a few bug fixes, including one that prevented the protected MBR from being written when restoring a GPT backup. See the NEWS file for additional details.
• 0.7.0 (3/12/2011)—The big change with this version is the FixParts utility (program name fixparts), which is intended to repair certain types of broken MBR partition tables. See the separate FixParts Web page for details on this program. Also new in this version is revamped MBR-creation code, a change to the minimum disk size that's forced to a minimum 8-sector alignment to 300 GB, and assorted bug fixes. See the NEWS file for details.
• 0.6.14 (1/8/2011)—This version features a few minor bug fixes and improvements, including adding the ability to specify partition start and end points in relative fashion in sgdisk's -n (--new) option, a change to APM detection code that will detect old APM data even if an MBR has been written atop an APM disk, and the addition of three new ChromeOS GUID partition type codes to those recognized by GPT fdisk.
• 0.6.13 (10/12/2010)—Minor bug fixes to the GPT-to-MBR conversion motivate this release. Specifically, the previous version did not permit any partitions to be logical when four or fewer partitions were converted. This has been fixed, as has a bug that could sometimes create an extended partition that overlapped with a primary partition by one sector.
• 0.6.12 (10/7/2010)—This version features several minor bug fixes and improvements. Most of these relate to the handling of disks with logical sector sizes of other than 512 bytes. I've also added support for "P" (pebibyte) suffixes for partition sizes (just in case you've got a thousand-disk RAID array!) and I've fixed an obscure bug that caused a segfault in sgdisk if you entered the (invalid) "-A show" parameter. As usual, consult the NEWS file for more details.
• 0.6.11 (9/22/2010)—This version emphasizes enhancements to disk verification and GUID entry features. The verify (v in gdisk or -v/--verify in sgdisk) function now checks for some common MBR problems, including overlapping partitions and proper placement of the 0xEE protective partition. There's also added protection against accidentally creating a hybrid MBR or MBR conversion with duplicate partitions, which was possible in previous versions. Entry of GUIDs in separate chunks in gdisk is no longer supported (it was an awkward method), and in sgdisk, the -t/--typecode option now accepts either a hex code value (e.g., 0700) or a GUID value. Finally, sgdisk adds a new option, -F/--first-aligned-in-largest, which returns the first usable partition, given the current alignment value, in the largest block of free sectors. This is similar to the -f/--first-in-largest function, but probably more useful in practice.
• 0.6.10 (8/22/2010)—New in this version is support for changing partition attributes using sgdisk (via the -A/--attributes option) and the ability to copy one disk's partition table to another disk in both sgdisk and gdisk (via -R/--replicate in sgdisk or u on gdisk's experts' menu). There are also a number of bug fixes, including one for backwards interpretation of attribute values in gdisk, improper destruction of MBR boot code when creating a hybrid MBR, and an inaccessible -C/--recompute-chs option in sgdisk.
• 0.6.9 (7/4/2010)—This version fixes a major bug in GPT fdisk's hybrid MBR creation. The bug caused incorrect end-sector (length) values to be created for the protective (0xEE) partition. This bug does NOT affect the standard protective MBR on non-hybrid disks.
• 0.6.8 (5/23/2010)—This version implements a number of minor new features and bug fixes. Most notably, the h experts' menu option (-C or --recompute-chs in sgdisk) recomputes all the CHS values in the MBR; the new -N or --largest-new sgdisk option creates a single partition that fills the largest available space; a new f experts' menu option (-G or --randomize-guids in sgdisk) randomizes all a disk's GUIDs; and -u/--partition-guid and -U/--disk-guid options in sgdisk enable setting partition and disk GUIDs. There are also fixes to enable the program to compile in FreeBSD and Microsoft Visual C++ (both were broken in 0.6.7), a minor sgdisk man page correction to --change-name, and new tests to prevent accidetally opening a directory or certain other file types as a disk device.
• 0.6.7 (5/1/2010)—GPT fdisk is now over a year old! This version is a minor bug-fix release. The most important bug to be squashed is one that caused a segfault on startup with certain rare bad partition tables. Others include a bug that produced incorrect partition number reports for some verification problems and a bug that caused a ridiculous claim of petabytes of free space on disks of 0 size (such as empty files or at least one user's malfunctioning hard disk).
• 0.6.6 Spanish—David García Barrero (dgbarrero@gmail.com) has contributed a Spanish translation of version 0.6.6 of GPT fdisk. Check the 0.6.6 folder of the GPT fdisk Sourceforge page to locate it.
• 0.6.6 (3/21/2010)—I've released this version mainly to get some new partition-alignment code out there. Specifically, I see that Western Digital now has a "640GB" (~596GiB) Advanced Format drive, and I don't want its users to be burned by misaligned partitions. Following discussions with a user and some additional research, I've also found that 1MiB (2048-sector) alignment is a good idea with some types of RAID array. Therefore, I've changed GPT fdisk to use a 2048-sector alignment by default on new drives, although the program attempts to identify and use smaller alignment values on disks that are already partitioned with them. Other changes include naming two new attribute bits (as per UEFI 2.3 specifications) and changing the behavior when the user specifies restoring a backup file that doesn't exist. As usual, you should consult the CHANGELOG file for details.
• 0.6.5 (3/7/2010)—The big new feature in this version is the ability to perform a GPT-to-MBR conversion with the possibility of placing logical partitions on the converted disk. This ability is dependent upon the presence of free (unallocated) space before each to-be-logical partition, though, so it's not guaranteed to convert every partition on every disk. It also obviously doesn't overcome the 2 TiB limit. See the updated Converting to or from GPT page for details. The Windows version also now works on disks with other-than-512-byte sector sizes. There are also a few other minor improvements and bug fixes; see the CHANGELOG file for details.
• 0.6.4-2 (2/20/2010)—The initial 0.6.4 release compiled fine on my test systems, which use GCC 4.3.x, but restructuring of GCC header files in GCC 4.4.x necessitated a minor change, so I released it as 0.6.4-2. I also incorporated a user-submitted patch to the Makefile to have the compiler pass on the user's CXXFLAGS and similar environment variables at compile time. Note that this doesn't affect the compiled program (depending on environment variables), so I've not released new binaries on Sourceforge. This release is purely to help users compile the software locally with GCC 4.4.x.
• 0.6.4 (2/19/2010)—This version makes a number of minor improvements and fixes a number of minor bugs. The biggest improvements are the addition of a transpose option (to change partition numbers) in both gdisk and sgdisk and the addition of the ability to create hybrid MBRs and to convert from GPT to MBR in sgdisk (this function has long been present in gdisk). Bug fixes include one that prevented the Windows version from saving backup files and a number related to sgdisk options. See the CHANGELOG file for details.
• 0.6.3 (2/3/2010)—This version fixes a major data-corruption bug on big-endian systems (PowerPC, for instance). You should not use earlier versions of GPT fdisk on such systems! At one time it did work, but the bug crept in somewhere along the line. This bug does not affect the program when compiled on little-endian (x86, x86-64, etc.) systems. This version also introduces some changes to the GUID code, including fixing some duplicate GPT internal type code duplicates and changing the random GUID generation function to use libuuid, which should produce more technically correct GUIDs than the simple random number generator I'd been using before. (The Windows version continues to use the simple random number generator, though.)
• 0.6.2 (1/29/2010)—This version employs a number of minor bug fixes and improvements, mostly related to the detection and handling of damaged GPT data structures. The t (change type code) option also now changes the partition's name if and only if the current name is identical to the original type code's generic name. The biggest change is the addition of Windows support. The current source compiles using the MinGW compiler (I used the Linux cross-compiler version); I don't know if it will compile with anything else.
• 0.6.1 (1/20/2010)—This is a bug-fix release that fixes three bugs: Run under 32-bit (x86) FreeBSD, the previous version reported incorrect disk sizes; under any FreeBSD version, it couldn't use disk images; and its BSD disklabel conversion incorrectly reported that the BSD disklabel was of an unknown type.
• 0.6.0 (1/15/2010)—Two important changes appear with this version: Support for disks with logical sector sizes other than 512 bytes and the new sgdisk program. I've used a magneto-optical (MO) drive with 2048-byte sectors to develop the non-512-byte sector size code. In theory, it should work with other sector sizes, but 512 and 2048 are the only ones I've tested. One caveat: Through at least version 2.6.32.3, a Linux kernel bug prevents use of disks with other-than-512-byte sectors. I found a patch for this bug here. Alternatively, you can download the modified efi.c file, place it in /usr/src/linux/fs/partitions, and recompile your kernel. If this is over your head, you'll need to wait for your distribution to incorporate this patch. FreeBSD, Mac OS X, and Windows are unaffected by this bug. The sgdisk program is a command-line tool with a subset of gdisk's features. It's intended for use in scripts (backup/restore scripts, scripts to prepare large numbers of disks in uniform ways, etc.). It's also very new. Although sgdisk uses the same code as gdisk for all data structures and functions, the user interface is new and is arguably not as clean as it should be. Bug reports and suggestions for improvement are welcome. You'll need the popt development headers to compile sgdisk (libpopt-dev or something similar). The popt run-time libraries are installed on most systems by default, so nothing new should be required if you install a binary package. In addition to these new features, this version includes a few bug fixes and very minor changes. The most notable bug fix is one that causes the convert-to-MBR function to work again (it broke a few versions back and I didn't notice it until recently). I also found that the logical/physical sector detection code wasn't working, so I've switched to using the 8-sector boundaries on drives larger than 800 GiB and 1-sector boundaries on smaller drives. This seems reasonable since the Advanced Format drives are all 1 TiB or larger.
• 0.5.3—This version fixes bugs in the display of GUID values when gdisk is compiled with some versions of GCC. The program also now detects the number of logical sectors per physical sector with Linux 2.6.32 and later, but not with earlier Linux kernels, FreeBSD, or OS X.
• 0.5.2—The appearance of Western Digital drives using the Advanced Format feature motivated this version, which aligns partitions on 4KiB (8-sector) boundaries by default. As described on the Partitioning Advice page, this alignment improves performance (or perhaps minimizes performance degradation) on such disks. The 'l' and 'd' experts' menu options change and display the number of sectors used in the alignment blocks.
• 0.5.1—This version fixes some bugs related to the expansion of hardware RAID arrays. When disks are added to hardware RAID arrays, the backup GPT header and partition table will appear to be somewhere earlier than the end of the disk, and previous versions became confused by this. Version 0.5.1 handles this situation better, and the 'e' option on the experts' menu will move the backup data structures to the end of the disk, where they belong. Note that if a RAID array has been fully allocated and a disk is added, it will be impossible to add more partitions until this operation is performed.
• 0.5.0—The bump to version 0.5.0 mostly reflects a new menu structure, which includes the main menu and the experts' menu from previous versions, along with a recovery & transformation menu. Other new features include a new GPT-to-MBR conversion, the ability to reload an MBR as a way of creating a new GPT, and generation of valid CHS values when creating hybrid MBRs or in the new GPT-to-MBR conversion. This version also incorporates a few bug fixes, including a fix for one that could cause data loss when using the "zap" function in version 0.4.2.
• 0.4.2—The only significant new feature in this version is the ability to work on disk image files as well as actual disks. This feature is intended to enable editing of disk images used in emulators, although you'll only be able to work on "raw" disk images, not the more advanced formats used by QEMU, VMWare, etc. This version also includes a number of minor bug fixes and feature improvements, such as additional prompts or warnings in certain potentially destructive commands.
• 0.4.1—Two improvements appear in this version: First, the method of specifying partition start and end points has been expanded to enable both absolute and relative sector specifications. See the Walkthrough page for details. Second, hybrid MBR synchronization has been improved. If you delete a GPT partition for which a corresponding MBR partition exists, the corresponding partition is deleted and, if possible, the protective 0xEE (EFI GPT) partition is expanded to fill the newly freed disk space. MBR/GPT correspondence checks have also been added to the verify (v on the main menu) command and before writing disk changes.
• 0.4.0—This version marks some major extensions to GPT fdisk: It now runs correctly on big-endian systems (an ancient PowerPC running Linux is my test platform) and it compiles and runs correctly on FreeBSD. I've also added support for converting BSD disklabels to GPT format—but BSD disklabels are tricky, so use that feature cautiously. (See the updated Converting to GPT page for details.) New partitions are now given a default name based on the partition type. This version also includes several smaller bug fixes and some code reorganization.
• 0.3.4—Fixed a few minor bugs, including one that enabled accidental entry of MBR partition type 0x00 during hybrid MBR creation and another that prevented acceptance of default end sector number under certain conditions when creating new GPT partitions. Added Debian binary packages to distribution set.
• 0.3.3—This version gives the user the ability to specify whether to create the EFI GPT (0xEE) partition before or after other partitions in a hybrid MBR configuration.
• 0.3.2—This version adds a couple of new features, namely the ability to create a hybrid MBR and the ability to clear the GPT data structures from a disk (in case you want to re-use it as an MBR or some other type of disk). See the Hybrid MBRs section of this document for details on that feature.
• 0.3.1—This version fixes a few bugs, including one that could cause a segfault under specific circumstances. It also adds Mac OS X support, thanks to two anonymous contributors.
• 0.3.0—This version added the ability to enter "raw" GUIDs as a single string rather than as five separate numbers. It also fixed a few very minor bugs. I bumped up the second version number from 2 to 3 and called this version the first beta release because I'd received several reports of successful uses of earlier versions of the program and no bug reports, aside from one compilation issue. I also added precompiled RPMs for 32-bit (Fedora 11) and 64-bit (OpenSUSE 11) distributions.
• 0.2.2—Fixed a compilation problem with GCC 4.4.0.
• 0.2.1—This was the first version released on Sourceforge and on my own Web page. It fixed a number of minor bugs, added a few partition type codes, and cleaned up the code a bit.
• 0.2.0—This was the first version to be shown to anybody aside from myself.

Additional details can be found in the NEWS file in the main tarball (or other package files).

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