Steven, Remember that DOS has certain limitations on the hard disk geometries it will see. Recall that many BIOS setups allow you to set a hard disk for Normal, LBA (Logical Block Adressing), and ... something else.
DOS, because it can't see more than ... 1024? ... cylinders (tracks) on a disk, has to be lied to so that the same capacity is achieved using a different geometry. LBA exists to "lie" to DOS so that it will see as much space as possible without choking. The typical finesse is to say there are fewer cylinders and more heads. Sectors per track usually stays the same. Linux, SCO, BSD, and others don't have this limitation. Therefore, if you have the disk registered in the BIOS/CMOS setup as "Normal" you may not be able to see it from DOS. How large is this disk? How many actual cylinders? Cheers, Garry * [EMAIL PROTECTED] ----- Original Message ----- From: "Steven C. Darnold" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Saturday, January 11, 2003 7:52 AM Subject: [SURVPC] HD problem > Can any of you guys think of a reason why DOS > (running on a floppy) is unable to access a HD > when Linux (booting from floppy to ramdisk) is > able to. > > Linux is able to fdisk the HD and mke2fs and install > itself to the HD. It can even boot a kernel from > floppy and run the HD filesystem. > > On the other hand, DOS is unable to fdisk the HD, > nor can it format the HD (after Linux has partitioned > it). fdisk /mbr doesn't work either. > > Linux has been used to rewrite the mbr with a known > good copy (no effect). The HD has been moved to > another computer where it worked perfectly. There > a DOS partition was created and formatted and the HD > returned to the misbehaving machine. Booting from HD > yielded "No operating system" error. There has been > no change from the problems outlined above. Linux > works, DOS doesn't. > > Anybody have any ideas? > > Cheers, > Steven > To unsubscribe from SURVPC send a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with unsubscribe SURVPC in the body of the message. Also, trim this footer from any quoted replies. More info can be found at; http://www.softcon.com/archives/SURVPC.html
