Very Computer

I have a problem: fdisk(linux) and partition magic(dos) both fail at
various stages when trying to partition and format a Seagate Medalist
Pro 6.4GB.

I have a hunch that the problem is related to the fact that my bios
insists on

LBA             chs=784,255,63          lba mode

whereas the seagate manual lists

LBA             chs=833,240,63          lba mode

The "actual" geometry is chs=13328,15,63. The failure mode is not the
same for pm and fdisk, but for example pm will freeze at 31% finished
when formatting some pn that I created. Fdisk otoh complains about
illegal entries for the extended partition.

Any ideas out there? I have studied nuumerous FAQs and HOWTOs and
mini-HOWTOs, but I have not come across this type of situation ....

----

Speaking for myself only

[Posted and mailed]

Quote:> I have a problem: fdisk(linux) and partition magic(dos) both fail at
> various stages when trying to partition and format a Seagate Medalist
> Pro 6.4GB.

> I have a hunch that the problem is related to the fact that my bios
> insists on

> LBA             chs=784,255,63          lba mode

> whereas the seagate manual lists

> LBA             chs=833,240,63          lba mode

Quote:> The "actual" geometry is chs=13328,15,63. The failure mode is not the
> same for pm and fdisk, but for example pm will freeze at 31% finished
> when formatting some pn that I created. Fdisk otoh complains about
> illegal entries for the extended partition.

Therefore, what I'd suggest doing is this:  Delete *ALL* the partitions
from the drive and use DOS's FDISK to re-write the MBR.  Do this with an
"FDISK /MBR" command.  I believe that Caldera's OpenDOS FDISK allows you
to do this from a command within the FDISK program.  Then create your
partitions with DOS's FDISK, Partition Magic, or Linux's fdisk.  If the
problem was a bad MBR, you should have no problems at this point.  I'd
strongly recommend using some error-detection options when formatting the
partitions, though.  See the man pages to mke2fs to find out how to do
this on ext2 partitions.  I believe that both Partition Magic and Win95's
FORMAT command do this by default.

--
Rod Smith                                 Author of:

http://www.users.fast.net/~rodsmith       "OS/2 Soundcard Summary"
NOTE: Remove the digit and following word from my address to mail me

Thanks to Rod Smith for the helpful suggestions on this matter a
few days ago. I finally got past the 1st obstacle but now I'm
stuck again :)

The initial problem with fdisk and pmagic was due to a stray ide driver
in config.sys:

REM ======== SIS-IDE IDE HARD DISK INSTALL MODIFICATION - BEGIN ========
device=c:\siside\sisdr.sys /M
REM ======== SIS-IDE IDE HARD DISK INSTALL MODIFICATION - END   ========

After nuking this, the partitioning and file copying from disk1(old) to
disk2(new) worked a lot better. It looks like the sis-ide driver did not
get along well with the new hard disk.

Now I have a semi-bootable disk2 where the win95 boot hums along for a
while, but eventually fails with the message

"device or resouce required by VFAT not present"
[on a Blue Screen, hardware reset required to reboot]

What on earth could this be? I have spent plenty of time safe-booting
and single-stepping and whatnot, but this happens later on in the
process, it appears.
----

Speaking for myself only