> The Ontrack program--DDO--is there to make sure that the whole drive can
> be accessed without cylinder wrap. The proprietary format is there to
> make sure that the drive cannot be read without DDO. Guess what. Linux
> read it with no trouble (and with no DDO loaded).
This means you use a floppy to boot Linux, right?
> DOS, on the other
> hand... I'll have to load DDO for Mr. Bill's sake. I don't want to
> lose my data if the system is booted into DOS with a floppy that doesn't
> load the DDO, so I guess I'm best off leaving the proprietary format on
> there. In that case, I could use the floppy but not the big hard disk
> (only the smaller one). I can boot from floppy *and* use the DDO if it
> let it boot from disk, press space at the right time, and insert a
> floppy (thanks to a feature of the DDO).
Another thing you could do is make a copy of the MBR that loads DDO and
then put that MBR on a floppy. It may not work, but then again, it may.
You could then put LILO in the MBR of hda (since LILO can read your drive
without the aid of DDO) and use the floppy to boot DOS. I think it
depends on what you want to use as your primary operating system.
> I have the option of doing a BIOS format. The DDO will still work, but
> then I can access the drive without it and risk cylinder wrap. I read
> that 1024 cylinders is around 528MB or so. Hmm. That's pretty
> limiting.
Well, I don't know how your BIOS addresses the disk, but the way I
understand it is that by CHS (Cylinders Heads Sectors) the BIOS can handle
1024 Cylinders, 256 heads, and 64 sectors per track. As each sector is
512 bytes, this allows up to (1024*64*256*512)=8589934592 bytes, or
8192MB, or 8.0GB. LBA simply addresses each sector sequentially, and I
believe the upper limit there would depend on how many bits you use for
addressing the disk. If today we use 32-bit processors, then you can
address (512*2^32)=2199023255552 bytes, or 2.0TB- I know the G is close to
the T, but this isn't a typo either. T is an abbreviation for "Tera" or
10^12. This is, of course, assuming my logic is correct.
I talked to somebody about this, and things are a little clearer now. It
sounds like your old BIOS can't handle drives larger than 512MB. The
Ontrack program gets around this. Don't reformat until you get newer
BIOS. Until then, continue to use the Ontrack program. What you might do
(if you're currently using floppies to boot Linux) is just let your
computer boot to DOS, and use loadlin to load a copy of the Linux kernel
off the 125MB DOS partition. I don't know too much about passing options
to loadlin, but I think the program's on the Mandrake CD and I know
there's documentation on the web (try
http://metalab.unc.edu/LDP/HOWTO/mini/Loadlin+Win95.html).
> I get it, except for cfdisk. I only heard of fdisk. Is that a typo? I
> know the C key is really close to the F key...
No typo. cfdisk is a "Curses-based fdisk," hence the "c." It's a little
prettier than fdisk, and I'd think easier for a newbie. Curses refers to
the libraries used to generate the text-mode menus.
-Matt
