Date: Thu, 31 Mar 2005 00:50:55 +1000 From: Raymond <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Re: [LIB] Please Help Me With New Hard Drive Install
Remember, the Libretto 100/110 laptops have TWO modes of hibernation. The first is the operating system specific hibernation - Windows 2000 for instance hibernates into c:\hiberfil.sys by default. In such a case, yes you are correct, there is no overwriting sectors around the 8GB boundary as Windows 2000 (and in fact you don't need to leave any space in any particular location on the drive as long as the file exists in C and is taking up that space). Unfortunately, being a somewhat older machine, the Libretto 100/110 on occasions will perform an "old style" BIOS hibernation, which writes at the 1010-1040 cylinder area (actually somewhat inside that area, can't remember the exact figures). Situations where it will do so include, if the processor begins to overheat or if the battery starts to die (and for whatever reason the operating system doesn't intercept this and do something about it first). In fact, if the laptop is in suspend and the battery falls below a certain BIOS-encoded threshold, it will come back to life (but not to the point of restarting the OS), perform a BIOS hibernation then turn itself off. The Libretto BIOS doesn't bother notifying the operating system in such cases (or if it does, never gives the operating system a chance to respond), it just performs the hibernation. Note that these situations are very rare, especially if you use your Libretto carefully, which is why some people have been able to get away without worrying about this but there is a non-zero chance of it happening. People on this list (and one person I know off the list) have in the past tried doing things like zeroing out all the sectors around the 8GB mark or putting partitions there and filling them with known data then performing a BIOS hibernation. Those sectors do get overwritten when the laptop hibernates (in fact that's how the exact sectors were determined - someone zero'd out a large area around the 8GB mark, hibernated then looked for where the run of zeros got overwritten). I can see you're not an easy man to convince, the only thing I can say with respect to that is to perform the test yourself. If you already have Win2k installed though I'm not sure how you'd force a BIOS hibernation ... perhaps turning off all Win2k power management and running down the battery might be the easiest way (but then I think the BIOS suspend kicks in first so you've got to wait for the laptop to drop battery a bit more, come out of BIOS suspend, then do its BIOS hibernation). I haven't looked too far back in the archives but in the recent past (back to around 2002), here are a few posts on the topic: http://www.technoir.org/libretto/list/2002/msg02785.html http://www.technoir.org/libretto/list/2002/msg01583.html http://www.technoir.org/libretto/list/2002/msg00781.html http://www.technoir.org/libretto/list/2002/msg00476.html - Raymond Quoting John Musielewicz <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>: > Date: Wed, 30 Mar 2005 06:01:26 -0800 (PST) > From: John Musielewicz <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > Subject: Re: [LIB] Please Help Me With New Hard Drive Install > > an ever better test to to write data to the sectors > and have the libby hibernate. surprize surprize, its > not being over written!! my my where ever could the > bios be writing hmmm? > > <snip>
