Mail Archives: opendos/2001/02/12/09:37:33
----- Original Message -----
From: "White Dragon" <white DOT dragon AT tin DOT it>
To: <opendos AT delorie DOT com>
Sent: Monday, February 12, 2001 2:31 AM
Subject: Re: Hard Disk 20gb and dos
> just tryed. It doesn't work. It says i don't have enough space to
> create and
> activate a new partition. Actually i have 5 gb free (not
> partitioned), after
> cylinder 1871. Maybe, i'm gonna backup everything and try to >
partition my
> disk with drdos. Maybe drdos cannot go after 8.4 gb on a big
> disk,
DRDOS has an 8GB limit. So I doubt that DRDOS FDISK will work beyond
8GB. You will probably need to make the DOS FAT 16 partition first using
whatever FDISK you choose. If you use the DRDOS FDISK 7.03, there seems
to be some kind of bug with it concerning the boot sector information.
If you use it, do not bother to have it check the full partition. Just
let it check and write the system area, then use the format command and
use the /U (Unconditional format) to format the drive.
Then use you WINDOZE FDISK and select BIG DRIVE option to do the FAT 32
partition(s). You can use the WINDOZE FDISK to do it all if you have it
available. It will work in DOS.
I suggest that you install WINDOZE first and tell it to install on the
FAT 32 partition. Some start up and kernel files will be put of the FAT
16 partition (DRIVE C:) for boot purposes, then will go to the FAT 32
for the operation of WINDOZE. I don't know if 98 still does this, but 95
would put all those .GRP files in the root directory of the boot
partition (DRIVE C:) I use the WINDOZE Explorer and move them to the
\WONDOZE directory on the WINDOZE partition. The registry will track the
movement of these for you and all will be okay.
Then install DRDOS. DRDOS will then rewrite the MBR and boot sector to
allow booting to either OS. If you install DRDOS first, then stupid
WINDOZE will rewrite the MBR and boot record. This is no big deal, you
just have to boot into DOS or WINDOZE DOS MODE and run LOADER in the
DRDOS directory. I usually do it the reverse and install DOS first, then
I make copies of the MBR and BOOT sector so when I remove WINDOZE, I
don't have to fool around selecting the OS I want to boot. I just
restore the MBR and BOOT sector to what it was in DOS before WINDOZE is
installed. I do this with 9x and NT. Most people do not know how to use
a DISK EDITOR and do these things. It can also be done with Emergency
Recovery utilities, but you have to know what is what and how to do it.
I just find using the DE is quicker for me. I keep a copy of it on an
Emergency Boot Diskette. Actually I have two, one for Nortons and one
for PCTools. I laso make a back up boot diskette set for NT and if I use
9x one for it. I also make a Linux boot diskette set. I also use
Otrack's Easy recovery Pro for NT and 9x and Ontrack's FIXIT utilities
in NT and 9x.
> but it
> can still use space below that level. So i'm going to create a 1
> gb fat16
> partition from cylinder 1 to 130. After installing dr-dos i will
> create
> another two partitions from cylinder 131 to 2495 using fat32
> (in which i
> will install windoze, i still need it) . I don't know if it is going
to
> work, but maybe it is worth trying. I guess that disk manager it > is
not
> free. But, there is a free public version (or clone)?
> Wait a moment! What exactly do diskmanager? I know that is a > kind of
bios
> translator which overrides the 8.4gb barrier on older systems,
> but it can be
> still used to force dos to recognize bigger disks? And what
I am not certain about this, but it should be able to recognise the
larger drives as it puts in a driver for this. You will need a version
that supports your drive. I have not used that free imatation version,
so read the text files and see what it can do. DM itself was written
specifically for each manufacture's drives. But that portion that is
manufacture specific, was just for low level formatting IIRC. So the
driver from any version supporting your size of drive should work fine.
If your BIOS will work with your size of drive, then you do not need it.
If you have FLASH BIOS, there should be an update file to handle the
larger drives.
> about drdos
> 7.05? I've heard that has fat32 drivers, but also lots of problems >
(such as
> file renaming!!! unbelivable!).
Thus far, that is the only bug I have heard about. Big deal, I use
1DIRPLUS and it has it's own rename. It could cause problems with some
programs that use it directly or from the command line. Most shell
programs use their own and probably will not matter.
> Maybe i could install first 7.05 and after copying ibmdos.com (or the
other
> one, i don't remember exactly) version 7.03 over the new one. Hoping
that is
> not that file that controls fat32...
(BTW, as far as I have been able to determine there is no 7.05. I looked
at the code in IBMBIOS.COM, IBMDOS.COM and COMMAND.COM and they all
state it is version 7.04 where the version number goes. It is only upon
boot or using the VER command that 7.05 ever appears.) (Either someone
goofed when they wrote it or did not update the version number in the
file(s)
7.04/05 is a special version that you can only get from Ontrack. It
comes with their Easy Recovery. There are several different dates on
these files and have different file sizes. So this problem may not
actually occur in all versions. I have a later one than what I have seen
posted on the DRDOS Web sites. I have never used it. I do not use FAT
32. I use Linux ext2, FAT 16, and NTFS (NT) So I have never checked it
out. If you downloaded the DRDOS from Lineo, Caldera, or Calderathin,
(All are the same FTP site) or CD, then you do not have the 7.04/7.05
kernel. If you do put 7.04/7.05 on, make a backup of the original kernel
files so they can be restored if you want.
> Answer to your question:
> Under win98 i don't feel urged to reduce the cluster size 'cause my
average
> file size is 226k, and i guess this is common for everyone who uses
windoze.
Yes, that is why I stated that it probably is not neccessary for me to
change it to 1k clusters. I just do it out of habbit. I use 1k blocks in
Linux, NT, and FAT 32 (when I have it installed.) WINDOZE is so bloated,
that 64k clusters probably would not have much slack space! (Of course
there isn't any FAT with 64k clusters.)
> It has to be said, that i use to zip small files when i dont need
> them, in
> order to store them in one file. For example, yesterday i packed > all
my old
> *.log files created by mirc 'cause the average log size was 2k-4k >
and my
> cluster size was 16k. It resulted in 6 mb of slack space. I used to
Yes, I often do that with old log files. I generally create new log
files about each month and zip up the old ones and use a filename to
indicate the year and month of the logs. I have not used Mirc in a long
tme, but do have all those log files zipped. I use it mainly with my BBS
software (Termintate) All of my FIDO stuff is in data base format and
those files are automatically zipped as well as the automatic backup. I
use Speed Read for FIDO and wished there was a version for NT that I
could use on these LISTs. Agent works fine for USENET. But this crap for
software OE sucks big time.I have Eudora and Star Office, but just have
not gotten around to inport the OE database into one of them. I am going
to be reinstalling Linux anyway and will probably use Star Office with
it, but need to download the latest version of it for Linux. I have an
older version backed up on tape for Linux and have 5.1 for NT.
> have one
> big partition because i needed the maximum continous space
> avalaible
> (ripping DVD is an hard work... ;-)) Now i have a cluster size of > 8k
and two
> partitions which is a good compromise.
This is fine for those huge files. There will not be much slack space,
even if you used 32k clusters. I currently have a 1GB partition as well
as the 650 which is FAT 16, but this is where I will install Linux.
(Maybe, I have a 4GB UW SCSI drive comming in soon and may just leave
this 3GB narrow SCSI the way it is. I will remove the IDE drive when the
4GB drive gets here. I hope I can just tranfer the NT boot files over to
another drive or partition and set that as the boot. I really don't want
to backup NT and reinstall it, I will back it up of course.)
> I belive there is a (slightly) loss of performance using a fat table
> too
> big. I don't think it is worthy, and after all, my slack % is only
2%...
> 50mb over 2.33gb of files.
Actually, larger cluster sizes are faster as the FAT table will be
smaller. But I doubt that you would really notice it in actual use, only
in benchmark programs that lie anyway!
> On my ancient 80mb ibm I had a slack which surpassed 15mb and at the
time i
> didn't have the knowledge to partition my disk...
Yes that will happen with DOS, because DOS files are very small compared
to WINDOZE bloated crap. I would probably had made that into 1 32MB
primary and the rest a DOS Extended partition and made rwo logical
drives in the Ext partition, each less than 32MB.
> Well, it is all for now. I'm eager to install dos again and play
> with my
> config.sys to gain those few kilobytes of conventional memory...
With DRDOS, you can gain a bunch. I have a ton of TSRs and drivers
installed and have 622KB of RAM left for programs. That is 622 real KB,
not 622,000 bytes. However, it takes a bit of tweaking to get this.
After you get DOS installed, post your CONFIG and AUTOEXEC here and
several people can analyse it and make suggestions as how to get more
conventional memory. DRDOS's memory manager works a lot different that
MSDOS does. It also has DPMS memory that uses extended memory to put a
lot of stuff in, thus giving you even more upper and conventional
memory. I can get over 600K per task window using Task Manager and have
never been able to do that with DV. The most I ever got in DV was
something like 540K for the first window and about 11K or 12K less for
each of the other windows. I don't need EMS memory, so I don't use
QEMM. If I do need EMS, then I install QEMM. I also want to check out
MAX which is similar to QEMM and found a copy of it posted on USENET.
(Don't recall the actual name of it.) There are tricks you need to use
with QEMM as well with DRDOS to get the maximum use of UPPER and
CONVENTIONAL memory.
Hint: Keep your number of buffers less than 30 and they will load into
HMA and you don't need a lot of them with NWCAHE installed. I use
something like 13-16 buffers and have another 4 with the FCBS. I don't
recall exactly what I finally used. I know I can use up to 29 and have
them all loaded into HMA in most configurations that I use. You have to
reduce that number if you shove other stuff up there that I do not use.
I do use SHARE. Without SHARE you can put more buffers up there, but you
don't need them with NWCACHE. In fact I don't even think you really have
to have any buffers at all. The 4 FCBS are probably enough. The FCBS are
loaded low. NWCACHE creates it's own buffers. I don't recall what I set
that to.
Also load the NWCACHE, NWCDEX, SHARE, and DRMOUSE before you use any
environment in the AUTOEXEC. i.e. before you enter the PATH statement or
SET statements. This will use far less enviroment in the Conventional
and upper memory areas. In fact load all TSRs and DRIVERs used in the
AUTOEXEC before the PATH and SET environments. This also helps keep
upper memory from getting fragmented. It does not cure all, but it does
help squeeze out more memory in both areas. It seems that not everyone
is able to eliminate the 7-8K of conventional memory used by NWCDEX. I
have been able to shove it all into upper and extended memory and use
none in conventional. It has to be loaded before any enviroment
variables to achieve this. Also it will not work by letting it load in
the CONFIG file. I have tried that and it will still use the 8K of
conventional. If you use QEMM, then edit the QEMM to only use 65,000
bytes to load NWCDEX, QEMM thinks it needs 128K to load it. It actually
loads in two parts, even though it is a total of 128K when loaded but
the bulk of it is in extended memory when DPMS is installed. You can
also gain some more in QEMM if you play with the size of DRDOS mouse to
load. I can usually force that into the B000-B7FF area doing this. I
believe it is somewhere around 11 or 12K I used for it. Somewhere I have
the exact number of bytes it needs to load. (AIR it's 12,340 but would
have to look it up or play with it again.)
Pat
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