Date: Sun, 29 Jun 2003 22:29:10 +0000 From: "Matthew Hanson" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Re: [LIB] EZ-BIOS problems -Was: Why is Partition Magic so slow??
Everything but Ghosting the 1st partition seems to be worked out now:
From: David Chien <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
At the minimum, I'd pull the drive and/or wipe it with the zeroing software the
HD maker gives out.
I wonder if not pulling it, and running overkill.exe to zero thing out in the desktop would have made any difference. I did very thing in the L70.
These older PM & Ghost applications may act funny with EZ-Drive (You're using
9.06 right?). Also, updating them should take care of funny incompatibility
problems.
I was headed there ar one point, but I'm not sure now if they are the problem at this point. Things seem to point to EZ-BIOS leaving something on the drive that overkill.exe is not zeroing.
Also, Libretto BIOS is the latest right?
I didn't think of that, but no. It's v6.2. A look at the revision history here doesn't look like it would affect things:
Version 6.40 10-19-1999 - Corrected a problem where, when using an incorrect key floppy diskette, the password would be canceled.
Version 6.30 06-11-1998 - A modification was made to provide compatibility with all three models of 2GB HDDs made by Toshiba and IBM
Version 6.20 11-13-1997 - Initial production BIOS for this model.
But I guess I could give it a try.
Finally, you can try Linux partitioning software to wipe the drives to see if
that'll do it. They should work perfectly.
Any name of the file I could look for? I actually do have one other zeroing utility you had suggested for testing for the hibernation cylinders. I have that somewhere.
Also, DOS fdisk should let you kill all of the DOS partitions (you'll have to
use something else for the non-dos partitions), and a fdisk c: \mbr should
bring a drive back to normal.
I had a problem with this when I didn't unistall EZ-BIOS 1st. But I did that out of frustration from the 'right method' still leaving problems with Ghost. See my recent post to the CServe PC Hardware forum below.
Make sure that when wiping the drive you don't load EZ-drive. Otherwise, it
may prevent you from completely erasing it.
Not sure what you mean there.
But here's what I reported to the CServe forum:
Overkill overwrites the partition table, and fdisk should not see any partitions after that. If there are still partitions visible, the MBR was not completely cleared.<<
I found my problem. I had been using the correct procedure to begin with (see below). But I was still having problems with Ghost not being able to create an image of the 1st primary partition. So the other day I tried just running overkill a few times without uninstalling EZ-BIOS 1st.
For some reason overkill did not zero everything on the drive. What happened after running overkill without removing EZ-BIOS (thinking EZ-BIOS would be zeroed), I did followed the overkill DOS message instructions to run 'FDISK /MBR', and then set up partitions with FDISK. But evidently FDISK /MBR found a backup partition table left from EZ-BIOS not being uninstalled, and reset the 3-4 partitions I had just deleted with Partition Magic just before running overkill. Running through this same procedure a few times, again I found FDISK would always report the presence of the old partitions.
The correct procedure was the one I originally followed. Which was:
* 1 Delete all partitions with PM
* 2 Uninstall EZ-BIOS from the EZ-Drive FDD via its menus
* 3 Run overkill to zero everything it can
* 4 Run FDISK /MBR, andcheck FDISK to confirm to partitions present
* 5 Run EZ-Drive and let it set up one big 19069MB primary partition and install EZ-BIOS
* 6 Run PM, and resize the 19GB primary partition to 400MB for test purposes.
* 7 Use PM to create a 2nd 400MB primary partition to put CD-ROM drivers on.
* 8 Restore a working image file from CD-R to the 1st primary partition.
Following that procedure I no longer had problems with Partition Magic going haywire while creating and removing partitions. However again, this was the original procedure I had 1st used when I was having problems with Ghost.
At this point, the system booted and ran Win98 from the restored image fine. But Ghost still can't create an uncorrupted image of that 1st partition on the drive. It insists on backing up not just the data, but the data along all of the free space from that partition. So if the 1st partition is 400MB, and only has 200MB of data, the Ghost will create a 400MB image file that fails to restore.
I >can< create uncorrupted images from any partition except the 1st one. And I can restore any uncorrupted image file to any partition on the drive, including the 1st.
I didn't have problems ghosting that 1st partition before I began this process. So it would seem that, like overkill.exe not zeroing data in some partition table that FDISK /MBR managed to find, there must still be data written to the drive somewhere that is confusing Ghost about the 1st partition.
And again, I've been running 'ghost -ffx' which I've been told I have to do to permit Int13 access to the drive due to the limitation of my BIOS, the reason I'me using the overlay. Does that sound right?
Though I can live with it, I'd like to sort this problem with Ghost not being to create a proper image of the 1st partition.
Thanks for the feedback.
Shel (Matt)
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