Re: OT: hard drive limits Q

On a sunny day (Sat, 23 Dec 2006 07:09:54 GMT) it happened Robert Baer
<robertbaer@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in
<6D4jh.2915$yx6.1968@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>:

MSDOS6.22, PCDOS7.0, Win98SE, Win2000 as OSes on these hard drives
will not boot, period.
Makes no difference what the partition size or format type (FAT16,
FAT32, NTFS) with the understanding that the format types tried were
supported by the OS.
Programs on the drive run fine with zero problems; the HDs just will
not boot.


grml: ~ # fdisk /dev/hdd

The number of cylinders for this disk is set to 14593.
There is nothing wrong with that, but this is larger than 1024,
and could in certain setups cause problems with:
1) software that runs at boot time (e.g., old versions of LILO)
2) booting and partitioning software from other OSs
(e.g., DOS FDISK, OS/2 FDISK)

To be able to boot there ineeds to be a 'bootable' flag set:
Command (m for help): p

Disk /dev/hdd: 120.0 GB, 120034123776 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 14593 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/hdd1 1 4927 39572715+ 83 Linux
/dev/hdd2 4927 9791 39072747 83 Linux
/dev/hdd3 9791 14593 38572778+ 5 Extended
/dev/hdd5 9791 9854 500000+ 82 Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/hdd6 9854 9860 49968+ 83 Linux
/dev/hdd7 * 9860 14593 38022715 83 Linux

Note the little asterikx in hdd7? thats is the 'bootable flag.

Note what is says at first:
The number of cylinders for this disk is set to 14593.
There is nothing wrong with that, but this is larger than 1024,
and could in certain setups cause problems with:
1) software that runs at boot time (e.g., old versions of LILO)
2) booting and partitioning software from other OSs
(e.g., DOS FDISK, OS/2 FDISK)

There is possible also a part of your problem, cylinder limit in the OS.

Upgrade your system :-)


.

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