specific partitioning by varchar column

[Atanas Todorov]

create table dTable (
`provider` varchar(32) default null,
`time` datetime default null,
`value` double default null,
) engine=archive;

We have thousands of these tables (million rows each). The number of different providers is about 100-200 (less than 1024). How to partition the table so each piece contains per-provider data only? I tried already:
select count(distinct provider) from dTable;
alter table dTable partition by key(provider) partitions <providers_count>;

Obviously the internal hash function does not guarantee such behaviour.
Any ideas?

Atanas Todorov

p.s. I'm using 5.1.22-beta on winxp