oops, no partition table

[me-5yx05kfkO/aqeI1yJSURBw at public.gmane.org (Matthew Gillen)]

Mark J. Dulcey wrote:
> DOS is another story. FDISK clears at least the first sector of any 
> partition it creates so that the partition will appear empty to the 
> FORMAT program. I don't know whether that is also true of the partition 
> tools in current versions of Windows.

Wow.  I'm flabbergasted.  Who was the genius that thought that up?  I know M$
has done some idiotic things, but that's right up there with keeping the
hardware clock in local time instead of UTC.  Let me guess: if the first
sector of the partition isn't zero-ed out, then FORMAT won't touch it, right?

Matt