Mail Archives: opendos/2000/07/07/12:49:39
On Thu 6 Jul 2000, Barbara Nitz wrote:
> Well, my active partition is NTFS formatted and will stay that way, as my
> machine is an NT machine, as Bob pointed out. This is also the reason why I
> won't use any FDISK from DOS on my HDD, it just might make the partition
> table unusable. Partition Magic works nicely to set active partitions and to
> switch the layout *if* you have a driveimage as backup (which I currently
> don't have).
I have to admit that I only had a short look at this thread so far,
so I might have missed something. However, if your (primary) NTFS
partition is the active partition, DOS will not be able to see any
primary FAT partitions on this drive, not with OpenDOS, not with
DR-DOS, not with MS-DOS/PC DOS. You should, however, be able to
see FAT partitions as logical drives in an extended partition.
DR-DOS FDISK allows to create them even if you don't have a
primary FAT partition. This should do it.
> > Does the bios (cmos setup) have a "boot from scsi" option?<
> Yes, either boot from SCSI first or boot from IDE first. Does not matter, as
> I also have an option turned on that drive A is the one to be checked before
> C. I do boot from A, and this succeeds. DOS just does not recognize the FAT
> partition as a C drive.
It cannot as long as the NTFS partition is active.
> > Obviously, I think it is primarily a cmos/bios setup problem<
> Well, I did some reading on OpenDOS features and setup, and I now believe it
> is a design flaw in OpenDOS. From all FDISK descriptions it sounds as if the
> FAT partition *must* be the first partition on any hard drive, not matter if
> you want to boot from it or not.
AFAIK this is a restriction with older versions of MS-DOS/PC DOS, but
not with DR-DOS.
Please let us know if it helps...
Matthias
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Matthias Paul, Ubierstrasse 28, D-50321 Bruehl, Germany
eMail: <Matthias DOT Paul AT post DOT rwth-aachen DOT de>
Web : http://www.rhrz.uni-bonn.de/~uzs180/mpdokeng.html
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