Accessing 'hidden' sectors on hard drives

[Jonathon McKitrick <jcm@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

I was reading recently about a copy protection scheme that stores data in
sector 32, which is apparently right after the partition info, correct?

The scheme I am looking at claims to defeat Norton Ghost and yet survive a
format... probably not low-level.  However, they will not reveal the details
of where the license info is, except to say it is not 'in the filesystem.'

Do these unused, reserved, or 'system' sectors exist on a UFS/FFS hard disk?
If I am 'dangerously dedicated,' does that extra space go away?  Is there any
way a copy protection scheme could be devised under FreeBSD that could access
that area, or another area beyond the reach of the filesystem?

Jonathon McKitrick
--
Hoppiness is a good beer.