kleonard@gvlv1.gvl.unisys.com (Ken Leonard) (07/17/90)
I am about to acquire a new system, a 386SX clone. It will be running DOS4.01 and WINDOWS3.0. It will be one of two brands (tbd in the next 2 or 3 days): AUSTIN or ZEOS. -- The key question(s) center on the type (and size) of hard disk: either MFM or IDE, 70 to 80 MB. It _will_not_ be RLL. I can't afford SCSI or ESDI. -- So... With DOS4, I _think_ I don't need a disk manager (e.g. SpeedStor or DiskManager) to do _any_or_whatever_ partitioning I may feel like doing. But DOS brings _no_ disk diagnostics, no way to assure confidence in the media over a long period of time (I think). ... But I would like to have a higher confidence level, by having decent and straightforward and not-heavily-masked disk-surface diagnostics. So is a disk manager the way to go? Is a disk manager even relevant with an IDE drive? ... Is there a disk manager that is safe with WIN3? Or a mode of running WIN3 (e.g. a startup or .ini switch) that makes it safe without killing performance? I have an application I occasionally run here at work (the new system will be at home) that _requires_ virthdirq=NO, which absolutely _trashes_ disk performance under WIN386/2.11. ... How many partitions will DOS4 FDISK let me have? And does it refrain from making stupid assumptions about what the partitions are or must be? I may end up running a UN*X-like partition, which will need to be made bootable as an alternative to DOS4. Can I depend on DOS4 FDISK to not screw-up the partition table? ... Am I even asking the right questions? Hey, Col. Custer, What am I Doing here? ----------------- thanx and regardz, Ken