From: "Michael Lueck" To: "opendos AT delorie DOT com" Date: Mon, 27 Nov 2000 21:42:01 -0500 X-Mailer: PMMail 2000 Professional (2.10.2010) For Windows 2000 (5.0.2195;1) In-Reply-To: <200011280224.VAA07863@delorie.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Subject: FAT32 and Partitioning question Message-Id: <200011272142348.SM00192@becky> Reply-To: opendos AT delorie DOT com Errors-To: nobody AT delorie DOT com X-Mailing-List: opendos AT delorie DOT com X-Unsubscribes-To: listserv AT delorie DOT com Precedence: bulk I've been busy working with OS/2 for many years, and hand installing Windows NT as needed. Over the past year I've worked on a project to convert the last 1200 OS/2 boxes I manage via electronic software distribution which I wrote in Rexx / with Windows 2000. The imaging technology I use on OS/2 was greatly enhanced on Win2K / MS DOS 7 (Win98SE) but there are some flaws. 1) DOSLFNBK runs out of memory at times, and I've recently build a special reboot into the load script to run the program w/o ANYTHING else non critical running. So far so good. The author has also quit communicating with us even tho we had bought an 8000 node license of his code. There were some other corruption issues which I fould resolutions for before he could find the acutal root of the issue. I would like to eliminate DOSLFNBK if there is a better reliable solution to capture the long file names on FAT 32 partitions. 2) InfoZip 32 for DOS is almost perfect. It drops the 31/2link which is the send to the A drive. DOSLFNBK can see the file / InfoZip can not. I delete that file befor imaging and have a InfoZip Win32 zip of just that file which I restore once booted into the GUI. I also had to write some code to recurse through the entire drive until no more hidden or system files could be found, as InfoZip could not recurse through such deeply hidden/systemed dirs. 3) The worst issue, Win2K being installed on D:, DOS on C to install the OS image - will from time to time "trounce" the partitions such that everything looks normal, but running a reload which formats the D drive as a first step does one of two nasty things: A) Does absolutely nothing and returns to the prompt. No status or error is given. MS DOS 7 does not correctly handle ERRORLEVEL so I can't check that. B) Formats both the D and C drive all at once! Poof, there went DOS, PUKE, CRASH! Going into FDisk shows normal partitions. Linux FDisk says everything is clean, Pri Fat32, type F exteneded (LAB Mode Extended) and a Fat32 Logical. Deleting the logical and recreating has no affect - thinking that writing a new partition table by actually changing something might help. The only disk cleanup is a small debug program to zero out the front of the HDD where the partition table sits. Then use the undocumented MS DOS 7 fdisk params to recreate the partitions. <><><> 1) Any ideas on how to see what is up with the partitions? If I could see why Format goes crazy very rarely, the possibly we could track down what is changing whatever it is that changes. 2) Any solutions for dumping MS DOS 7 for anther DOS - taking suggestions. I have to be able to boot the DOS on a FAT32 partition, not just access FAT32 on other drive letters. 3) Backup/restore the LFN's some other way. TIA! Michael Lueck Lueck Data Systems http://www.lueckdatasystems.com/