Hello Sami,

Tuesday, September 21, 1999, 2:57:43 PM, you wrote:

SG> Ups. Too Late. I'm sorry, but I've tried to do it without waiting for all
SG> the replies. Now my HD is a 8Gg one, and it has really 10.2Gg. How is this
SG> "wipe disk" process? what are the softwares that allows me to 'destroy' old
SG> partitions based on new BIOS? I don't really care of losing the data (I'll
SG> backup everything). I hope that when I get the new MoBo, I'll be able to
SG> wipe it and use all his capacity.
SG>     Thanks;
SG>         Sami Garzon :)

SG> | Once the harddisk has been using as 8G, it
SG> | will stay at 8G (even fdisk couldn't get rid of it!!!), unless you use
SG> some kind
SG> | of software to Destroy old partition then rebuild partition based on new
SG> BIOS. I
SG> | had been through this few times, unless I do a "wipe disk", the wrong
SG> partition
SG> | size will never be gone.

  In fact, you may probably be able to save your existing partitions.

  -- how to save
The most important thing there is to save is the drive access mode in
BIOS. It should be now either Large or LBA. Make sure your new BIOS
will stay with the same setting - when I tried writing on a HD that
was detected correctly save the operating mode, I got a tremendous
list of bad information on a drive when it returned to home system.
Luckily, no information was lost. I think that with extra-large drives,
(8G plus) LBA is the only good option, but I'm not sure -- help, anyone?

-- what changes
Now for the partitioning. The 8G limit arises from
partition table limitation and BIOS access mode : 1024cyl x 256head x
64sectors [16 bytes total]. Max size is, 1024x256x64x512=8.589e9
bytes. While disk access over 8Gb is not complicated as LBA can be
used, partition table values over 8G must contain something. There is
a special "Large size placeholder" value placed there, I won't detail
it but the fact is that some software will deal with it correctly and
some will not. For example, Nuts&Bolts have a problem with this at one
of the machines I worked on. You must be careful when creating and/or
operating first few times the partitions over 8M, and backup is mandatory.

 -- how to save
If all goes right, you will have [after changing the bios] 4G of
unpartitioned space that can be dealt with with regular software.
PartitionMagic works - checked, but "your mileage may vary".

-- how to erase
If you still want to erase, you will always be able to access the
partition table, since it is side 0, track 0, sector 1 - one can't get
the first sector wrong no matter what the drive parameters are. Simply
run fdisk and wipe all. If it fails, use RPM [Ranish Partition Manager - I like
this freeware program!] to wipe the first sector's part. table clean.
You don't have to do anything else then and disk can be considered empty.

+=-.
| Max Timchenko [MaxVT]
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