[Info-vax] questions on initialize/gpt

[Michael Moroney]

Simon Clubley <clubley at remove_me.eisner.decus.org-Earth.UFP> writes:

>AIUI, (not actually having used IA-64 VMS) the GPT.SYS file is just
>a fake partition created by VMS $ init to allow the contents to be
>visible from the console.

Yes, there's just enough there for the Itanium console to find files
necessary to boot VMS.  One partition covers the whole disk (other than
what's covered by the special boot files partition) to tell any other
OS that those blocks have been claimed.

BTW the funniest report I've heard in a while is that a thumb drive
formatted with bootable VMS will crash Windows if it's plugged into a
Windows system.  I just tried it; Windows 8.1 doesn't crash and sees the
files the Itanium console needs to see, but Windows XP crashes.