Read this: http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/hwdev/tech/storage/ntfs-preinstall.mspx
(If you are lazy, read the sections on "Cluster Alignment for NTFS vs. FAT" and "OFORMAT".) In short, converting from FAT to NTFS results in a cluster size of 512 bytes, and the claim is that Windows performs better with a cluster size of 4K or so. For Windows 2000, there is nothing we can do about this unless we can find a way to install to NTFS natively. This will be hard; neither DOS nor Linux supports writing to an NTFS volume. For Windows XP, however, all we need to do is use the OFORMAT utility, or something like it, to align the data clusters on a 4K boundary. The FAT-to-NTFS conversion in XP will then by smart enough to use a 4K cluster size after the conversion. But there are a couple of problems. First, OFORMAT is a Microsoft tool, and I would like to move away from Microsoft tools since I technically cannot distribute them. Second, OFORMAT does not run on DOS 6 (or so I read somewhere; I have not actually tried it yet). In principle, there is no reason that the FreeDOS format.exe could not support the "/A" flag just like OFORMAT does. In practice, it does not. However, the Linux tool mkdosfs supports an interesting "-R" option: http://www.die.net/doc/linux/man/man8/mkdosfs.8.html This option sets the number of "reserved" sectors. In theory, by choosing different values, we should be able to affect the alignment of the data clusters. I think. There is just one problem, which I discovered while playing with this stuff today. If you format a FAT partition using mkdosfs, with or without the -R flag, you cannot install Windows on it. The winnt.exe installer successfully copies the files over and sets up the boot sector, but when the machine reboots, it immediately halts saying: Disk error Press any key to restart Using "dd if=/dev/hda | less", I determined that this message is coming from the boot sector on the FAT partition, not from the BIOS or MBR. So mkdosfs is doing SOMETHING which makes the NT boot sector code unhappy. I don't suppose there any any boot sector or x86 assembly wizards on this list? Oh, well. I have sent Email to the FreeDOS format.exe maintainer (to ask about adding a /A flag) and to the mkdosfs maintainer (to ask about fixing whatever it is doing wrong). No replies yet. Would anyone care to dig up a copy of OFORMAT, experiment with it, and post the results? - Pat ------------------------------------------------------- This SF.NET email is sponsored by: eBay Great deals on office technology -- on eBay now! Click here: http://adfarm.mediaplex.com/ad/ck/711-11697-6916-5 _______________________________________________ unattended-info mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/unattended-info
