Subject: MS DOS and disk drives maybe OT

From: Ron Hudson <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri Mar 14 02:12:00 2003

Please forgive me if this is Off Topic...

I have a 1 gig drive in a 486. The BIOS sees the whole 1.2 gig (wd 
caviar 21200)
and I have set the parameters from the plate on the drive into the 
bios...

But FDISK insists that the drive is only 504 MB. Who ate half of my 
disk drive??

can I get it back?

how?

I have tried to create secondary partitions but "no disk space remains"

Thanks.

ron.

---

From: "Rob O'Donnell" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri Mar 14 03:19:01 2003

This is pretty typical of MS-DOS; it has a 504Mb limit.  There are a number 
of "disk managers" available that (typically) boot up before DOS, and fool 
it.  One popular tool was "ontrack", which many mfrs supplied customised 
for just their own drives.

There are a number of tools linked from 
here:   http://www.vobis.de/bbs/firmen/wd/hrddrive/
I've used ezdrive9 in the past with WD discs with success.

(Worst episode of this fault I rememeber was using a caching IDE controller 
[expansion board with own memory] which reported a 1Gb disc, but wrapped 
around at 504Mb - overwriting the boot sectors and root directory as we 
wrote the 505th Mb...)

regards

Rob.

At 00:09 14/03/2003 -0800, Ron Hudson wrote:

>I have a 1 gig drive in a 486. The BIOS sees the whole 1.2 gig (wd caviar 
>21200)
>and I have set the parameters from the plate on the drive into the bios...
>
>But FDISK insists that the drive is only 504 MB. Who ate half of my disk 
>drive??
>
>can I get it back?
>
>how?
>

---

From: Paul Berger <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri Mar 14 07:46:00 2003

> for just their own drives.

MS-DOS 6.22 will support drives upto 8.4gb, I don't know about any prior
versions though.  Usually the BIOS that causes the 512MB limit in my
experience, so you may want to look into a bios upgrade.

Freedos http://www.freedos.org/ will support drives upto 128GB and is
mostly MS-DOS 6.22 compatible.

> I've used ezdrive9 in the past with WD discs with success.

Same here because the bios did not support my 850MB disk and ezdrive
came with the drive.

Regards,
Paul

---

From: Ron Hudson <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri Mar 14 12:04:00 2003

yup, that's got it

Thanks lots.

504mb would have probably been fine for DOS, but I paid for 1.2gb -now 
I have 1.2gb

: ^ )

ron
------------

On Friday, March 14, 2003, at 01:15  AM, Rob O'Donnell wrote:

> This is pretty typical of MS-DOS; it has a 504Mb limit.  There are a 
> number of "disk managers" available that (typically) boot up before 
> DOS, and fool it.  One popular tool was "ontrack", which many mfrs 
> supplied customised for just their own drives.
>
> There are a number of tools linked from here:   
> http://www.vobis.de/bbs/firmen/wd/hrddrive/

---

From: "Fred Cisin (XenoSoft)" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri Mar 14 12:30:00 2003

> I have a 1 gig drive in a 486. The BIOS sees the whole 1.2 gig (wd 

the BIOS (disk I/O) or the CMOS setup program?

> and I have set the parameters from the plate on the drive into the 
CMOS
> But FDISK insists that the drive is only 504 MB. Who ate half of my 

WHICH version of MS-DOS?

> can I get it back?

yes

> I have tried to create secondary partitions but "no disk space remains"

Is your controller "EIDE"?

---

From: "Fred Cisin (XenoSoft)" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri Mar 14 13:57:00 2003

> This is pretty typical of MS-DOS; it has a 504Mb limit.  There are a number 

The 504M limit is BIOS, NOT MS-DOS.

But MS-DOS before version 3.31 had a 32M limit.
But the 32M limit did not apply to the network redirector.  Therefore, to
handle CD-ROMs (3.10 and above), MICROS~1 provided MSCDEX.EXE, which made
the CD-ROM look like a network drive.  Try a CHKDSK of a CD-ROM on MS-DOS
3.10 through 6.22 - it will say: "Cannot CHDSK a network drive"

> around at 504Mb - overwriting the boot sectors and root directory as we 

As easy as bashing MICROS~1 is, we can't blame the OS for BIOS or hardware
faults.

--
Grumpy Ol' Fred        [email-masked]

---

From: Ron Hudson <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri Mar 14 15:19:01 2003

> the BIOS (disk I/O) or the CMOS setup program?

CMOS setup program... (press del as the machine boots)

>> But FDISK insists that the drive is only 504 MB. Who ate half of my

6.2.2

> Is your controller "EIDE"?

um, stumped here.

It's an ISA card and also has serial and parallel, game port and floppy
connectors on it.

---

From: "Philip Pemberton" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri Mar 14 15:27:00 2003

Fred Cisin (XenoSoft) wrote:
> Therefore, to handle CD-ROMs (3.10 and above), MICROS~1 provided
> MSCDEX.EXE, which made the CD-ROM look like a network drive.  Try a
> CHKDSK of a CD-ROM on MS-DOS
I must remember to try that sometime. :-)

> As easy as bashing MICROS~1 is, we can't blame the OS for BIOS or
> hardware faults.
"MicroSoft? Is that some kind of toilet paper?" - IIRC that came from the
Mandrake Linux installer. Hmm... Now we know what MandrakeSoft thinks of
Microsoft. But then again, the same joke can be rephrased as "MandrakeSoft?
Is that some kind of toilet paper"... The mind boggles...

Just getting the OT crud out of my head for today...

Later.
--
Phil.
[email-masked]
http://www.philpem.dsl.pipex.com/

---

From: [email-masked]
Date: Fri Mar 14 22:05:00 2003

While I was browsing via /. , I came across this link:

http://www.science.uva.nl/faculteit/museum/rampspoed.html

Words doesn't express well, photos did what everybody on this list 
had talked about before.

If you have more photos like this, provide an url for them.

Cheers,

Wizard

---

From: Mail List <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri Mar 14 23:18:01 2003

Make sure your BIOS supports LBA mode. Else use a drive overlay,
which can also be a source of problems later.

---

From: "Fred Cisin (XenoSoft)" <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat Mar 15 00:51:00 2003

> Just getting the OT crud out of my head for today...

Just so long as we all do whatever it takes to make Bill Gates 
into a millionaire.

---

From: "Philip Pemberton" <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat Mar 15 01:08:00 2003

> Just so long as we all do whatever it takes to make Bill Gates
I'm *TRYING* to get rid of Windows, dammit, but Outlook is holding my e-mail
to ransom... I actually prefer to use either Pegasus Mail or Mozilla. But
the rest of the family wants to use Outlook...

Later.

---

From: "Rob O'Donnell" <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat Mar 15 03:36:00 2003

>the rest of the family wants to use Outlook...

Have you tried evolution ?  It looks very like outlook..

Ta all for the correction on 504Mb limit in bios not msdos - I knew that, 
but got it wrong.  I just blame my memory and it being a good few years 
since I last hit that problem.

---

From: Doc Shipley <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon Mar 17 00:26:28 2003

> But FDISK insists that the drive is only 504 MB. Who ate half of my

  Some BIOSen will only address 1024 cylinders, even if they "see" more.
OnTrack, Drive Rocket, EZDrive, any of the drive overlay programs will
get around that.

-- 
  Doc Shipley		((	And when thou hack'st her box, thou shalt
  Austin, Texas		 )) 	lay that pipe with exceeding great vigour,
			((	yea, even unto the screaming and clawing
  [email-masked]		 ))	and biting.		-- Cantrell

---

From: Ron Hudson <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon Mar 17 09:36:00 2003

EZDrive is working well. Thanks all  : ^ )

---

From: David Woyciesjes <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed Mar 19 10:35:00 2003

Yeah, I'm a little to this thread, but...

I have (for sale/trade) 3 of the SIIG EIDE BIOSAdapter ISA cards. They
work with the existing IDE controller to break the 528MB partition
limits. It also directly supports drives up to 8.4GB. I've used the card
before, and it works pretty good....

--
---Dave Woyciesjes
---ICQ# 905818

---

From: David Woyciesjes <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed Mar 19 10:40:01 2003

> before, and it works pretty good....

	Oh, and I forgot to mention... It's all done in the hardware. No disk
manager needed. Which is nice, since I hate OnTrack, it makes moving the
HDD to another PC a bit of a pain...

--
---Dave Woyciesjes
---ICQ# 905818