Thread: Second Drive Not Recognized in Win98
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Old October 16th 08, 11:51 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
mikesmith wrote:
| hey jeff sorry i havent got to you in a while..i had some personal
| family matters to tend to
| i glanced over what you wrote to me..
| and i'll try and read it in more detail as soon as i can..
| yeah its kind of hard making sense of some of it..
| and it may take me a while to try and figure it out...
| if i can...
| just want you to know im going to respond to it..
| and let you know the out come..
| and im not just going to dissaper...
| just have to take care of other things..
| thanks for all your trying to do..
| i should respond in a few days..
| plus a day or two to try figure what you wrote..
| yeah thanks for even trying to help here..
| yeah thanks a million buddy..
| talk to you soon as possible

All right, keep him/us informed.

| "PCR" wrote:
|
| 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
|

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