endter@pioneer.arc.nasa.gov (Bill Endter RCU/DEC) (05/04/91)
Thanks to everyone who gave me their input about the ST1144A IDE drive.
I have another question regarding the bios selection for this drive.
The Specs for the ST1144A drive suggest that you use a bios setting
of 1001 cylinders, 15 heads, and 17 sectors for maximum storage. My bios
does not have a user defined disk drive entry, so I am stuck using one of
the predefined entries. (I tried upgrading the bios, but it didn't work. My
system uses 128k bios chips, and all of the current bioses are on 256k chips.)
I have two bios entries which are close, but not exact. Both entries
specify 15 heads and 17 sectors. The first one specifies 917 cylinders, and
the second one 1024 cylinders. I know I can use the first entry without any
problems, but I will lose some disk space. What I would like to do is use
the 1024 cylinder entry, and then only specify up to 1001 cylinders when
setting up the disk partitions with FDISK. I would then think that DOS would
not try to use any cylinder higher than 1001.
Does anyone see a problem with this? Has anyone done anything like
this on their system? Is the landing zone cylinder ever used by DOS?
Thanks,
Billianhogg@cs.umn.edu (Ian J. Hogg) (05/05/91)
In article <1991May3.185023.2028@riacs.edu> endter@pioneer.arc.nasa.gov (Bill Endter RCU/DEC) writes: > > The Specs for the ST1144A drive suggest that you use a bios setting >of 1001 cylinders, 15 heads, and 17 sectors for maximum storage. My bios >does not have a user defined disk drive entry, so I am stuck using one of >the predefined entries. (I tried upgrading the bios, but it didn't work. My >system uses 128k bios chips, and all of the current bioses are on 256k chips.) > > I have two bios entries which are close, but not exact. Both entries >specify 15 heads and 17 sectors. The first one specifies 917 cylinders, and >the second one 1024 cylinders. I know I can use the first entry without any >problems, but I will lose some disk space. What I would like to do is use >the 1024 cylinder entry, and then only specify up to 1001 cylinders when >setting up the disk partitions with FDISK. I would then think that DOS would >not try to use any cylinder higher than 1001. > > Does anyone see a problem with this? Has anyone done anything like >this on their system? Is the landing zone cylinder ever used by DOS? I just had a bad experience with my disk. The disk was installed by the PC company and they set it up with 1024 cylinders, 14 heads, and 17 sectors. After having the system for a couple of months I've managed to load of 85 Mb of disk space. I ran Norton Disk Doctor for the first time and it said that 8.9 MB of blocks were bad. I talked to Seagate and some helpful people on the net. I started copying files in order to fill up the disk. I stupidly did this without backing up the system. Anyways, I was running gnuish "cp -r" from ms_sh. Something overran the cylinders and wrote over the beginning of the disk. All data on the disk was lost and I am now reloading software and getting ZIP's from BBS. I'd be careful. I'm ordering a tape backup on Monday. > > Thanks, > > Bill -- =============================================================================== Ian Hogg ianhogg@cs.umn.edu (612) 225-1401