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] Content-Type: text Message-Id: From: Michael Jones 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