On Mon, Mar 20, 2006 at 12:47:54PM +0200, Oded Arbel wrote: > On Monday, 20 בMarch 2006 11:33, Avraham Rosenberg wrote: > > 2-This 20Gb disk was brought to me by a windows user. His > > report: When I try to boot I get an unending row of 00 and 01 > > values. Suspecting a corrupt boot sector, I tried fdisk /mbr from > > a DOS formatted/s floppy. As this did not work (do you know any > > better way ?), I mounted it as first slave in my computer and was > > able to save his data. And there it remained as he could not make > > use of it. > > The inability of microsoft tools to overcome boot sector problems should > not be construed as the boot sector being unusable. > > I would be surprised if a linux boot loader (or a commercial boot loader > such as PowerQuest BootMagic) would fail to initialize the boot sector > propertly, and I suspect that after installing Linux on that harddrive > (with the boot loader in MBR), you could then go on to install windows > on it without problems (not that I suggest that its a good idea - שטח > משוחרר, לא יוחזר ! ;-> ) > > -- > Oded > > ::.. > A lack of leadership is no substitute for inaction. Hi Oded, Your mail comes some three years late. Nowadays, no one would take the pains even to spit on a 20GB HD. After buying the new computer and installing the software, I intend to keep the old for awhile for all kind of experiments that I don't dare to do with the one "for serious use". The fastest way to do it is to move (or recreate) the stuff from my present first disk on a 1.2GB bootable disk + on partitions of the second disk. Subsequently I shall donate it. If that will be to a Linux user, there is no need to change anything. If, on the other hand there will be need to install Windows, I shall try one of the methods you suggested (including low-level format, if this is doable for this disk: I saw once or twice warnings against it. I think that the subject was discussed on this list as well). Cheers, Avraham
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