Thread: Second Drive Not Recognized in Win98
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Old October 5th 08, 07:29 PM posted to microsoft.public.win98.disks.general,microsoft.public.win98.gen_discussion
PCR
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Posts: 4,396
Default Second Drive Not Recognized in Win98
Jeff Richards wrote:
| I have not used the process you describe, but I think it is unlikely
| to work.

Yea, I haven't used it either. And I haven't yet found an instance of
anyone having used it for this purpose (but I'm sure some must exist
somewhere). And I'd hate to see mikesmith waste his Quantum Fireball.

BUT Terabyte has deemed it possible to put an Option 8 into MBRWork (a
little 26KB program), & Terabyte usually is quite good. Therefore, it
must be possible to do it-- but what really needs to be done?

Is it as you fear that something unusal has been done to the structure
of the partition (maybe the FAT tables)? Or can it be all is well with
that-- & only the MBR has been altered? Then, into the MBR boot code was
inserted a call to the Quantum DDO that kind of supplements BIOS to
understand LBA. The MBR table (& the FAT tables) could be a normal one
that includes LBA information. However, looks like the partition type(s)
is altered, maybe to...

http://www.win.tue.nl/~aeb/partition...n_types-1.html
Partition types
..........Quote.....................
55 EZ-Drive

EZ-Drive is another disk manager (by MicroHouse, 1992). Linux kernel
versions older than 1.3.29 do not coexist with EZD. (On 990323
MicroHouse International was acquired by EarthWeb; MicroHouse Solutions
split off and changed its name into StorageSoft. MicroHouse Development
split off and changed its name into ImageCast. It is StorageSoft that
now markets EZDrive and DrivePro.)
..........EOQ.......................

Can it really only be necessary to change that "55" to a normal FAT
code? Here is what MBRWork shows to me for my slave drive, run from a
Windows DOS box. "c" is a primary FAT32 partition, & "f" is an extended
partition...

----------------------------------------------------------------------
MBR Partition Information (HD1):
----------------------------------------------------------------------
¦ 0: ¦ 0 ¦ 1 1 0 ¦ c ¦ 239 63 1021 ¦ 63 ¦
16374897 ¦
¦ 1: ¦ 0 ¦ 239 63 1021 ¦ f ¦ 239 63 1021 ¦ 16374960 ¦ 61795440 ¦
¦ 2: ¦ 0 ¦ 0 0 0 ¦ 0 ¦ 0 0 0 ¦ 0
¦ 0 ¦
¦ 3: ¦ 0 ¦ 0 0 0 ¦ 0 ¦ 0 0 0 ¦ 0
¦ 0 ¦
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Here is what that URL says about them. Obviously, it was written before
the advent of Win98, though...

0c WIN95 OSR2 FAT32, LBA-mapped
Extended-INT13 equivalent of 0b.

0f WIN95: Extended partition, LBA-mapped
Windows 95 uses 0e and 0f as the extended-INT13 equivalents of 06 and
05. For the problems this causes, see Possible data loss with LBA and
INT13 extensions. (Especially when going back and forth between MSDOS
and Windows 95, strange things may happen with a type 0e or 0f
partition.) Windows NT does not recognize the four W95 types 0b, 0c, 0e,
0f ( Win95 Partition Types Not Recognized by Windows NT). DRDOS 7.03
does not support this type (but DRDOS 7.04 does).


| The point of the Quantum software is to map the disk
| sectors to hardware parameters that the BIOS can understand. Simply
| rewriting the MBR without that particular mapping in place could
| write the MBR to the 'wrong' physical location, possibly overwriting
| data such as FAT. Then again, it may not, as the MBR location is
| often the same between the mapped and unmapped states. That may be
| why the drive appears to be partially accessible (and why I was
| careful to warn against allowing anything to write to it). But when
| it's accessed by the OS, if the correct mapping is not happening then
| the FAT will not make sense (even if it hasn't been corrupted) as the
| logical sector numbers used in the FAT will map to different physical
| locations (and also presumably won't match the partition
| information).
|
| The Quantum software might have a facility for undoing the mapping -
| that is, physically re-arranging the data in the sectors to match the
| default hardware characteristics - but in my experience it is easier
| to copy off the data and rebuild the drive from scratch. Note that I
| was careful not to call this 'uninstalling' - the management software
| is not currently installed, and my guess is that's the problem. What
| we are trying to achieve is to undo the special sector numbering
| arrangement of that drive. It's not just terminology - it's an
| important distinction because there is a significant amount of
| complex data shuffling needed.
|
| Also, we have to first confirm that this is actually the problem.
| --
| Jeff Richards
| MS MVP (Windows - Shell/User)
| "PCR" wrote in message
| ...
| Jeff Richards wrote:
| | It sure sounds like the drive was set up to be managed by the
| | Quantum software. At this stage, that's a better assumption than
| | some difference in the LBA (which is what could have happened as a
| | result of needing to make special settings in the original BIOS).
| |
| | If you can find the Quantum software then have a good look through
| | the documentation to get an idea of what's needed to access that
| | disk. The process will involve installing the drive management
| | software to the boot disk (C in your case) WITHOUT going through
| | the drive setup procedure for the drive that is going to be
| | managed - that is, without doing the equivalent of FDISK on the
| | second drive. You might even be able to do the setup without
| | having that drive connected to the machine, just to be safe. It
| | will probably complain about no having any drives that need to be
| | managed, but should still install. Once the software is running
| | it only interferes with those drives that require it. When you
| | then reconnect the old drive, it should then be recognised as a
| | managed drive and should become accessible.
| |
| | So the important thing to keep in mind is that the software has two
| | parts. The disk preparation part for the drive to be managed, which
| | has already been done and you definitely do not want to repeat, and
| | the management software installation part (to the boot drive) which
| | you do want to repeat. The documentation for the software should
| | cover that option.
| |
| | It may be possible to use the Quantum software to prepare a boot
| | floppy that will give you DOS access to that drive. That will at
| | least prove what the problem is, and you could, if necessary,
| | retrieve your data through DOS.
| |
| | In the meantime, be very careful that you don't do anything that
| | might write to that old disk. In its current state it looks usable
| | in some circumstances, but if data gets written to the disk then it
| | may be written using different partitioning parameters to those it
| | is actually set up with, and the file system will be corrupted. Be
| | particularly careful of anything that wants to try and 'repair' the
| | disk (as distinct from simply examining, displaying or copying off
| | the contents) as the repair could destroy all the data.
|
| Since mikesmith's new Compaq 5000US motherboard/BIOS sees the full 20
| GBs of the Maxblast drive (as he reports & I've seen it in a NET ad),
| isn't it worth a try to uninstall Maxbast? And I wonder whether
| MBRWork could do that with its Option 8. If Option 8 doesn't show
| up, I wonder whether this would do it...?...
|
| http://www.terabyteunlimited.com/utilities.html MBRWork
| Free MBR utility.
|
| (a) Option 7 - Work with multiple hard drives.
| Get to drive 1, the bad one.
| (b) Option 1-- Backup the first track on a hard drive.
| Makes a backup of the current MBR & EMBR.
| Then, Option 2 can undo all of the following...
| (c) Option 3 - Reset the EMBR area to all zeros.
| A generally unused area between the MBR & end of first track,
| but it can hold a drive overlay or 3rd party boot manager.
| (d) Option 4 - Reset the MBR area to all zeros.
| This wipes the MBR table holding the dimensions of all partitions
| on that drive, if more than one. But it leaves all other drives
| intact.
| (e) Select option A to recover partition(s).
| This generates partition dimensions into the MBR,
| getting them somehow from the partition data area itself.
| Sounds like it ONLY will work, IF the MBR has been mussed,
| & everything else is fine.
| (f) Option 5 - Install standard MBR Code
| This will put boot code into the MBR.
|
| .......Quote MBRWork Readme .......
| MBRWork - Freeware utility to perform some common and uncommon MBR
| and disk functions. Provided As-Is.
|
| It can perform the following:
|
| 1 - Backup the first track on a hard drive.
| 2 - Restore the backup file.
| 3 - Reset the EMBR area to all zeros.
| 4 - Reset the MBR are to all zeros.
| 5 - Install standard MBR Code
| 6 - Set a partition active (avail on the command line too)
| 7 - Work with multiple hard drives.
| 8 - Remove EZ-Drive (You must boot directly to a diskette [bypassing
| ez-drive] for this option to show)
| 9 - Edit MBR partition entry values.
| A - If no partitions exist in the MBR and no EMBR exists then this
| option will allow you to recover lost FAT, HPFS, NTFS, and
| Extended partitions.
| C - Capture up to 64 disk sectors to a file.
| R - Restore up to 64 disk sectors from a file. This feature should
| only be used by those who completely understand what they are
| doing!
| T - Transfer/Copy sectors from disk to disk. This feature should
| only be used by those who completely understand what they are
| doing!
| P - Compare sectors.
| .....EOQ... MBRWork Readme .............

--
Thanks or Good Luck,
There may be humor in this post, and,
Naturally, you will not sue,
Should things get worse after this,
PCR