I have two hard disks each primarily for the system files of Linux and WinNT respectively.

After a recent file system crash I rebuilt my system with Linux tools, including two small partitions for the use of windows (NTFS and vfat) on my Linux disk. WinNT could not access those and I neither found out why nor bothered further with it.

It just happened I started NT's harddisk manager. It complained about its being started for the first time or that I had got a new hd -- which lacked its proper signature (proper by windows standards). And could it (WinNT) please write the signature now, with no negative consequeces for other OSs (like DOS ). If not, the hd would be treated as off line...

What signature might that be? Should I dare to let it write? Anybody any ideas what WinNT is up to here?

*bump*

Alternatively, anybody know of a likely Windows-forum (a littly like LQ ) -- I'm out of my depth there...

I am guessing that since the disk manager was run for the first time, it had just become aware of your new partitions. The sig is likely to be code to identify said partition to Windows.

Since this is a Windows question, I am moving it to General - home of Windows questions on LQ. In fact, if you look through General, you will see a recent thread asking about Windows forums.

Thank you XavierP for moving and commenting the thread.

Basically you were right about Win securing "its" possessions and writing the deed to the disk, but I was afraid WinNT would write to the MBR or boot sector(s) thereby damaging GRUB or the Linux boot sequence or even data (since Windows is rumored to be less than accomodating to the use of other OSs ).

I found out what it does, though , since a Win-admin pointed me to the right google search string coming up with this.

In brief: WinNT wanted to write a signature to its registry, not to the new hd. Well, I let it, and now it "sees" my /dev/hdb, but it still didn't recognize that the partitions were (NTFS and vfat) formatted

Well, I can live with that until the time I kick out Windows entirely