Hello Alain, One question, did you happen to manage how does WinNT perform with such an "enlarged" FAT system? I'm tired of the fact that I have to either partition or use NTFS (rather problematic if you protect your "Documents and settings" with password and then windows gets trashed), and it could be a very nice solution to just FORMAT using FreeDOS FORMAT to create huge FAT partitions, and then use them normally, even with WindowsNT:
BTW, it would be such a nice advantage, that I am suspicious that Microsoft may have a good reason not to, any idea? I hope it's not just a commercial technique to try to push users into NTFS. Cheers to all! Aitor 2008/9/9 Alain M. <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>: > Hi all, > > I just tested the FreeDOS format on the big disk. IT WORKS FLAWLESSLY :) > > the previous problem was due to a too old kernel. I used the one from > Rugxulo labeled as fat-security. > > - Fdisk did everything as expected > SATA2 500Gb disk one 100% partition > - Format did everything as expected both in quick mode of surfece scan > Warning: Each FAT is 119208 sectors, > 16MB-64k, Win9x incompatible > FreeDOS goes well beyond old MS-DOS limits > - Disk booted normaly > - Machine is an Athlon X2 4400+ dual core, with 2Gb RAM. I may be that > this insane amount of memory (matches the insane size of the disk) > helped to avoid the reported "too big disk" message. > > See more below... > >>> 1) new disk was used with Linux, but a first primary partition was made >>> but never formated >> >> Make sure it is flagged as fat32 and as lba. Check possible >> messages from initdisk early during freedos boot as well. >> >> I recently tried making a DOS bootable partition on a new >> disk, too, and found: 1. I had to mimick a "fdisk /mbr" >> to make anything boot 2. I had to say my partition is LBA >> and bootable. 3. I had to tell sys-freedos-linux that the >> disk and offset are 255 (auto) and 63 (see fdisk -u -l in >> Linux) respectively as mkdosfs had failed to set those. I >> also told sys-freedos-linux to use LBA style boot sectors >> to avoid any geometry troubles but that was optional :-). > > I did all the tests in FreeDOS, nothing else ... Normal use is with GRUB > which can handle all that without problem > >>> 2) booted FreeDOS 1.0, and with fdisk deleted everything and creared >>> only one primary partition for the whole disk >> Why did you delete the partition and make a new one again? >> Same bugfix suggestions as for step 1. > > I had used that same disk for other tests, including Ubuntu... > >>> 3) rebooted >>> 4) fdisk /mbr (to remove grub) >>> 5) format c: /s /u >> >> Try without /s. Use the /d option to get debugging messages. >> Use the combination /q /u unless you insist on waiting for >> days until format completes. Really. So: FORMAT C: /Q /U /D > > both /Q and /U worked as expected with new kernel :) > > Thanks to all, > Alain > > ------------------------------------------------------------------------- > This SF.Net email is sponsored by the Moblin Your Move Developer's challenge > Build the coolest Linux based applications with Moblin SDK & win great prizes > Grand prize is a trip for two to an Open Source event anywhere in the world > http://moblin-contest.org/redirect.php?banner_id=100&url=/ > _______________________________________________ > Freedos-kernel mailing list > Freedos-kernel@lists.sourceforge.net > https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-kernel > ------------------------------------------------------------------------- This SF.Net email is sponsored by the Moblin Your Move Developer's challenge Build the coolest Linux based applications with Moblin SDK & win great prizes Grand prize is a trip for two to an Open Source event anywhere in the world http://moblin-contest.org/redirect.php?banner_id=100&url=/ _______________________________________________ Freedos-kernel mailing list Freedos-kernel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-kernel
