Subject:	Success!
To:	opendos AT delorie DOT com
Date:	Wed, 17 Mar 1999 23:15:27 -0500 (EST)
X-Mailer:	ELM [version 2.4 PL25]
Message-Id:	<E10NUDP-0007DG-00@iglou.com>
From:	Michael Jones <zgw AT iglou DOT com>
Reply-To:	opendos AT delorie DOT com

I just want to thank those who offered advice about my corrupt
partition, *especially* Glenn McCorkle who suggested the 
obvious (dangerous, but obvious): rewrite my partition table with 
Linux fdisk.

I didn't think I could, given only that I knew the relative order
of the partitions and the estimated-to-two-digits size of each
partition.  But after he suggested this, I thought it over and
figured, "Hey, as long as I use the same program, the estimated
size should be consistent."  And it worked!

Granted, I would not have tried this (or would have
procrastinated for weeks or even months while I deliberated
whether I could live without the data if I messed something up)
had it not been for the fact that I just bought a new 10GB drive
and was able to back up my entire first hard drive -- corrupt
partition and all -- with Linux's dd.  (I never considered dd as
a potential backup tool before, but now....)

And once I finally got around to it, it took me less than an
hour.

So now I have a working system once again.  And I doubt very
seriously that I will ever use DR-Dos's fdisk again.  Seems
reasonable to have to clear the first 512 bytes of a new DOS
partition by hand, in exchange for not having to worry about
software corrupting my partition. :)

(Of course, with a new 10GB drive, I *can't* use Dr-Dos's fdisk
again.

Hmmm... Since Caldera has their own Linux distribution, what is
preventing them from porting Linux fdisk over to DOS, or at least
those magical parts that give it access to large hard drives?
(Or that recognize non-DOS partitions?)  Or is this a DOS
limitation that can't be overcome with user programs?)



Now back to your regularly scheduled discussion of DR-Dos wish
lists...


--
Michael Jones

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