Very Computer

We have NT Workstation 3.51 installed on a dual-processor Pentium 133 with
two disks. One partition on each disk has been set aside for a combined
stripe set across the disks. So far all is well.

Linux is also installed on this system, and we have found that when the
LILO boot loader is installed on the MBR of the boot drive, NT loses
information about the stripe sets.

After several repeated tries of installing NT and Linux on the same
system we've come to the conclusion that NT stores stripe set data on the
MBR of the boot drive. Is this true?

If so, it's a serious let-down---NT does not 'own' the MBR of the system
upon which it is installed. The MBR is not the best place to store important
OS-dependent information; I can only surmise that there must be some 'good
reason' for it.

Moreover, I can't recover the stripe set data without deleting the stripe
set and re-formatting both partitions (thus losing all data). It would seem
straightforward enough to recover the stripe set data without requiring a
reformat. Unfortunately NT does not seem to have this kind of accident
recovery functionality built-in. Is there something that I am overlooking?

Thanks for any help,

--
Jesus saves: -4 versus rods, staves, and wands.

I believe NT disk administrator stores a `signature' somewhere in the
MBR/partition table. Running lilo trashes this signature. This gives
me problems as NT forgets any remapping of drive letters I have done
in disk administrator. This is a considerable nightmare as the wrong
drives are then shared over the network. Microsoft really ought to
improve this system of drive identification. I am not aware of any
workaround.

Regards
--
Dave Godfrey


PGP key available

        ...and I thought that Windows 95 destroying LILO by overwriting
the MBR was bad...
        Microsoft really ought to be scolded and told that computer users
have a choice about what OS and/or combination of OS's they can use on their
machines.  The fact that Disk Administrator trashed my MBR and caused my
hard drive to make funny noises (before restoring the FIPS rootsector and
completely doing away with NT) and produce all sorts of errors.  No more
NT for me; it's 95 and Linux from now on.
        P.S.  This is the first request for help I've seen from mdw.  This
problem must REALLY be bad...

..........----------==========**********==========----------..........
                        Arthur Dikran Jerijian
         UCLA Undergraduate, Computer Science and Engineering
          World Wide Web: http://www.seas.ucla.edu/~jerijian
        Snail-Mail: PO Box 5103 / Sherman Oaks, CA 91413-5103
..........----------==========**********==========----------..........

...so let me get this straight...

NT can't/won't start other partitions (by using whatever NT puts on
the MBR).  Thereby, if it DID work, LILO could simply be on the boot
sector of the partition rather than the MBR.

NT uses information outside the bytes of the usual partition table.
Therefore, any other usually friendly program like lilo that tries to
write a MBR will wipe out NT data.

One thing I can think of, if you really need LILO as the MBR, is to
make sure that the LILO actually occupies all bytes from the start to
the partition table (which I doubt).  One could slightly modify lilo
or the building of its parts so that only the necessary bytes are
replaced... that is to say, the sector merge process only lays in LILO
code, and never lays in zeros or NOPs.

Small wish: change the standard name of the LILO installer to "liloinst"
or something so the differnece between the LILO code installed and the
code/map installer seems more clear.

MS is warped.  Or maybe they ought to be Warp'ed :^)

Quote:Welsh) writes:
>Linux is also installed on this system, and we have found that when the
>LILO boot loader is installed on the MBR of the boot drive, NT loses
>information about the stripe sets.

lilo makes a copy of the original MBR. so to start NT, first start a small
program copying back NT's MBR. when stoping NT, restore the lilo MBR.
of course this is a mess, but that's the penalty for using MS stuff:->

gerhar

Quote:

>Moreover, I can't recover the stripe set data without deleting the stripe
>set and re-formatting both partitions (thus losing all data). It would seem
>straightforward enough to recover the stripe set data without requiring a
>reformat. Unfortunately NT does not seem to have this kind of accident
>recovery functionality built-in. Is there something that I am overlooking?

You should be able to use Disk Manager to save the disk configuration and then
to restore it later. I have done this when I had a disk crash enabling me to
restore a stripe set where none of those disks were the ones that failed.