Mail Archives: opendos/2000/09/16/18:59:01
At 06:29 PM 9/15/00 -0600, "Pat" wrote:
>I would like to know hat problem people are having with DRDOS 7.03 FDiSk,
>7.02 for that matter? I have been using it for several eyars now and have
>had no problems, in fact just the opposite.
You haven't been using it to set up small hard drives, then.
DR-DOS can create partitions that are big-time incompatible
with MS-DOS, possibly resulting in trashed volumes if such
drives are accessed by The Evil Empire DOS. I don't recall the
size limit -- 127 megs, perhaps? -- but I'm pretty sure I first
saw the problem on a Maxtor 7120.
There are two bugs. Either one alone is pretty trivial, but
both together are possibly disastrous. First, DR-DOS
FDISK chooses cluster sizes poorly on very small drives.
This by itself only creates excessive cluster overhang.
Second, it writes a strange OEM ID string. Something like
"DRDOS 7" if memory serves. This ID string is probably
purely cosmetic for DR-DOS, but MS-DOS uses it to decide
whether or not to "trust" the values in the BIOS parameter
block which specify (for example) the cluster size... and,
indirectly, the start of the root directory....
Reading a small drive set up this way under MS-DOS is
amusing and harmless. Writing to a drive set up this way
under MS-DOS will probably trash disk structures and data.
I do not recommend using the newer (Caldera) versions of
FDISK. The one that shipped with Novell DOS 7 is probably
okay.
I have explained the problem to Caldera. They understand it
and have agreed that it could cause data loss. No fixed
version has been forthcoming. If you want a free FDISK, I'd
recommend Brian Reifsnyder's (sp?) FreeDOS FDISK. He
is actively developing it, and is interested in bug reports.
raster AT highfiber DOT com
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