[Galaxy Note GT-N7000 General] v.cecchetto:
The reason we find in the MBR only a big huge partition of 16GB is because today MBR is deprecated in favour of GPT.

GPT is the new way to indicate partitions tha overcome MBR limits (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GUID_Partition_Table).

In MBR you can have only 4 partitions, in GPT you can have usually at least 128 partitions.

GPT is backuped in the last sectors of the disk, MBR is not.

MBR uses old method to indicate sectors (CHS - en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cylinder-head-sector) with all its limits, GPT uses only LBA way to indicate sectors.

In GPT you have CRC to control if the table is correct or not..

Ok you understand GPT is far way better tha MBR.

Why the hell in your Note you find MBR?

Because of historical reason, and for all those programs tha yet rely on MBR. If an old program (it uses MBR yet) try to access the disk it find a big EFI type partition and don't try to mess with it! :)

Now start GPT analysis (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GUID_Partition_Table):

LBA 1 (sector 1)

# hd -n512 -s1b /dev/block/mmcblk0

0000200: 45 46 49 20 50 41 52 54 00 00 01 00 5c 00 00 00 EFI PART....\...
0000210: ec 20 7f 58 00 00 00 00 01 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 . .X............
0000220: ff 9f d5 01 00 00 00 00 22 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ........".......
0000230: de 9f d5 01 00 00 00 00 41 4e 44 52 4f 49 44 20 ........ANDROID
0000240: 4d 4d 43 20 44 49 53 4b 02 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 MMC DISK........
0000250: 80 00 00 00 80 00 00 00 f2 77 67 42 00 00 00 00 .........wgB....
0000260: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ................
*
00003f0: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ................

[512 B]	-------- GPT HEADER --------

+8	[45 46 49 20 50 41 52 54]	"EFI PART"

+4	[00 00 01 00]	Revision GPT v1.0

+4	[5c 00 00 00]	Header size 0x5c = 92 Bytes

+4	[ec 20 7f 58]	CRC32 of header

+4	[00 ..]	Reserved must be zero

+8	[01 00 00 00 00 00 00 00]	Current sector: LBA 0x1 = 1

+8	[ff 9f d5 01 00 00 00 00]	Backup sector: LBA 0x1d59fff = 30777343

+8	[22 00 00 00 00 00 00 00]	First usable sector for partitions: LBA 0x22 = 34

+8	[de 9f d5 01 00 00 00 00]	Last usable sector for partitions: LBA 0x1d59fde = 30777310

+16	[41 4e 44 52 4f 49 44 20 4d 4d 43 20 44 49 53 4b]	Disk GUID: "ANDROID MMC DISK"

+8	[02 00 00 00 00 00 00 00]	Starting sector of array of partition entries: LBA 0x2= 2

+4	[80 00 00 00]	Number of partition entries in array: 0x80 = 128 partition at maximum

+4	[80 00 00 00]	Size of a single partition entry: 0x80 = 128 Bytes

+4	[f2 77 67 42]	CRC32 of partition array

+420	[00 ..]	Reserved must be zero

You find here some useful informations:

- number of maximum partitions for this table, for this particular GPT HEADER you can have up to 128 partitions.

- CRC to control if the GPT table is valid

- which space you can use for real partition content

You can find that the backup of this header is located at LBA 30777343, the really last sector of your flash memory, you have 30777344 sectors but remember you start numerating them from 0.

I tried to use hd to show it but my version of hd doesn't accept that huge address (I dont know if for a bug of for some other reason). Anyway you can dump the last bytes of your flash memory with this command (in this case I dumped all the 8192 sectors that remain after the last partition to the end of the flash memory):

# dd if=/dev/block/mmcblk0 of=/sdcard/last.bin bs=512 count=8192 skip=30769152

and after hd on it! :)

# hd /sdcard/last.bin

at the end you find an almost exact replica of the GPT HEADER:

(to obtain the real address you have to add 30769152 * 512 = 15753805824 in hexadecimal 0x3ab000000, so the first address you see below is not 0x3ffe00 but 0x3ab3ffe00, so it is the LBA 0x3ab3ffe00 / 0x200 = 0x1D59FFF, in decimal LBA 30777343, skill in hex calculation and conversion can be useful sometimes :P)

...
003ffe00 45 46 49 20 50 41 52 54 00 00 01 00 5c 00 00 00 |EFI PART....\...|
003ffe10 48 9e 3a c7 00 00 00 00 ff 9f d5 01 00 00 00 00 |H.:.............|
003ffe20 01 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 22 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 |........".......|
003ffe30 de 9f d5 01 00 00 00 00 41 4e 44 52 4f 49 44 20 |........ANDROID |
003ffe40 4d 4d 43 20 44 49 53 4b df 9f d5 01 00 00 00 00 |MMC DISK........|
003ffe50 80 00 00 00 80 00 00 00 f2 77 67 42 00 00 00 00 |.........wgB....|
003ffe60 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 |................|

it differ from the main GPT HEADER in:

- current sector and backup sector that are swapped (naturally you are in the backup one!)

- starting sector of array of partition entries: LBA 0x1d59fdf = 30777311 (the attached real table of all the partition, that is backuped too)

- and naturally CRC32 of header

... to continue...