Hard disk problem

[Jerry Feldman, ZKO3-3/Y25, DTN:381-2970]

> The problem we are having is that the hard disk (Western Digital model
> AC2700, 700 MB) has on it a "Disk Manager" from a company called
> On-track.  This is code that is on the boot sector of the hard disk,
> supposedly to get around the around the 1024 cylinder problem.  (The
> BIOS is AMIBIOS, which a AMIBIOS date of 07/25/94.)  In any case, we
> couldn't read the partition table, and after calling Western Digital
> and On-track, we ended up fdisk'ing and formatting the hard disk.
<SNIP> I didn't want to waste a lot of bandwidth. 
The problem you have is that Disk Manager remaps the physical disk into a 
logical disk. I don't remember the exact mapping strategy. This is why the 
linux fdisk fails. 
Here is my suggestion: (This assumes that you no longer want to use DOS at 
all).
First, boot DOS from a bootable DOS diskette, preferably DOS 6.x. DO an fdisk 
/mbr 
on the hard disk. This should reset and remove Disk Manager. Or, from DOS, 
disk manager has some utilities which will remove itself. 

Next, boot Linux from floppy, and build the partition table from scratch. 
Linux should be happy. 

If you still need to have DOS on the primary partition, I would suggest 
backing up your DOS data, perform the above operation, creating a DOS 
partition, then restoring your DOS Data after reformatting that partition. DOS 
will be happy without DIsk Manager as long as it doesn't need to see anything 
beyond cyl 1024. 
+-------------------------------------------------------------+
Jerry Feldman            Unix Systems - Development Engineering
Mailstop: ZKO3-3/Y25     (603)881-2970, DTN:381-2970, 
Digital Equipment Corp.  gaf at zk3.dec.com
110 Spitbrook Rd.        
Nashua, NH 03062-9987    
Member Boston Computer Society BOD : gaf at bcs.org
+-------------------------------------------------------------+