boot floppy won't recognize 2nd HD

I'm trying to use a Win98 boot floppy to call ghost to create an image of my NTFS disk and store it on a FAT16 disk. I've been able to format that FAT16 HD, but can't get the floppy to recognize it. I found a neat little .exe file that lets Win98/95 view and interact with NTFS partitions, so the source is visible to ghost, but the destination is not. I don't believe I sys.com'd the FAT16 drive, but if I did, it would have been from XP's cmd. (I've been copying such files from my Win98 machine on the network). The second HD is set as a slave, and I've installed Freedos on it, but I don't want to boot from it, so I haven't changed any boot.ini settings.

Am I missing something here?

 

I'm guessing, but try this one on for size....

You said that you weren't sure about whether you SYSed the FAT16 drive from WinXP. If you did, you may have overwritten the FreeDOS system files with those on the C: drive of the system you ran SYS from. Is it possible that the FAT16 drive now thinks it has an NTFS format? If so, a DOS/Win98 boot diskette will not recognise it.

Another thought. You don't need to install any operating system on a slave drive -- or on any drive or partition that you're not going to boot from. It's pointless to install an OS on a slave drive if you're not using a boot loader in a multiple-boot system -- the system can't boot directly from a slave drive.

Is FreeDOS getting in your way? Would it be worthwhile knocking down the partitioning on the destination drive, then formatting a fresh partition without installing an operating system on it? (And don't SYS it either!)

And a follow-on to the second thought: you're not trying to deal with a partition larger than 2GB on that FAT16 drive, are you?

 

Sorry, I guess I should have mentioned that I put FreeDOS on second in an attempt to get the floppy to recognize the drive - so if I had sys'd it, then FreeDOS would have overwritten it. I was just reaching for something/anything that the floppy would recognize... I don't want to boot from it.

I could reformat, there's nothing important on it. And yeah, because I'm not sure what size the image files will turn out to be, I haven't partitioned it at all, so it's about a 74GB partition. It's been so long since I dealt with FAT16, I didn't even think about that.. Does it matter what version of fdisk/format or gdisk I use, so that I can format it FAT32?

Thanks for steering me onto the right path!

 

A Win98 (or later) Startup Diskette should work OK -- that version of FDISK and FORMAT can provide a FAT32 format. When you start FDISK, accept the option for large-drive support.

And make sure that you don't FDISK the wrong drive! (It's very easy to make that mistake.)

Another option that might work: if you can see the secondary hard drive from Win98, you might be able to use the Win98 Drive Converter to convert the FAT16 format to FAT32 -- if the Drive Converter is installed on the Win98 machine. I don't think you can do that from the Win98 Startup Diskette, though.

Does XP have a similar utility?

 

From what I remember, I always enabled large disk support when entering fdisk. I make double sure about what drive I'm fdisking.. There's nothing important on the 2nd HD, so I can fool around with it however I want. Oh, I did read on the MS site that some older versions of FDISK would show the size of the HD minus 64GB. The version I was using was one of those.. I downloaded the update on the Win98 machine, but haven't tried that version yet.

I suppose something like Disk Management in Computer Management could do something like that, otherwise with XP's command prompt and some disk config program that I can't remember the name of. I tried using that as well, since at the time my boot floppy didn't recognize my NTFS volume and was concerned that the floppy had changed the drive letter of my XP partition. I thought, within Windows, there's a lesser chance of that happening (because I had seen that occur once before on a computer a work, involved a reinstall). I'll look into that as well, if I can't get the fdisk/format combo working.

Thanks again.

 

Hmmm. I haven't run across that statement before. Can you provide the Web page reference?

I don't understand why FDISK and FORMAT on your Win98 Startup diskette as you had it wouldn't have done the job. The Win98 version of those files will provide a FAT32 format. Is there a limitation in the BIOS on your machine? See Maxtor's white paper on big drives.

 

Later today I can probably find that page again... Just for kicks, I checked again last night about it being FAT16 and all.. My boot floppy says it is FAT16 and a Primary Dos partition, where as WinXP says it is FAT32. So now I'm confused.. I don't know what it is now. I think the easiest way now would be to just redo it. But I'll take suggestions.

 

Here's the link to the FDISK and 64GB size issue: http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;Q263044

All hard drives are less than 137GB in my home. The one with my NTFS partition is 120GB and the one I'm trying to access is 80GB. The article got me thinking... I have the NTFS HD on the master channel and the "unaccessable" HD as a slave on the same IDE cable. I wouldn't think this would cause a problem, but I'm not sure about that. I can check tonight or tomorrow to see if there is a BIOS upgrade available for my comp. The computer itself is a little over a year old, but since XP sees it, it's got to be something on the floppy.

Thanks for the help

 

Thanks for that. I've learned something new -- and I'll patch my Win98SE Startup Disk, because I do occasionally use it for setting up hard drives. I hadn't stumbled across the problem, because I haven't set up a drive larger than 40GB -- yet.

I don't see how that would cause a problem -- but maybe I'll learn something more here.

I think we can scratch the BIOS limitation theory. Your computer is much newer than I had given it credit for. And if any OS can see the drive, it's not going to be the BIOS that's in the way when you've started from the floppy disk.

I get nervous when I see different systems coming up with different results like that. It shouldn't happen. Makes me want to re-partition the drive from scratch just for safety's sake. But maybe that's just me.

 

You're welcome. If I get some free time during my evenings this week or during the weekend, I'll try reformatting it. I still think we can beat this problem.

 

The anticipation got the better of me. I reFDISK'ed and reformatted and things went smoothly. My only question is why format only did it's thing on about 10GB's of the 74GB? Oh well, the image creation went smoothly.

Now to get Zone Alarm back down to v4.5 so SP 2 doesn't force me to use the new image. And I'd like to get my network boot floppy workin' but that's another thread and a longer term project it seems. *sigh*

Thanks for the ideas and help Rob.

 

You're quite welcome -- glad to have been able to help a little. But I haven't a clue about why FORMAT only did 10GB on the 74GB drive. Anyone else out there got some bright ideas?

 

The images I made more than filled up the 10GB it formated, so I guess I'll be burning the parts to CD this weekend incase something fails. But I don't think it should be a major problem. We'll see, huh?

 

I should have thought to ask in my last post: what does FDISK report when you ask it to display partition information for the 74GB drive? Maybe there's a clue there that we can work with.

 

Nope, FDISK showed 74GB... I burned CDs with the broken up images on last night. I made two different images, and have gone past the 10GB that it formatted. I think I'll be ok, unless my HP CD-Rs give out.

 

That seems to be consistent with an older version of FORMAT.COM and Microsoft's knowledgebase article at <http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;263045>, which says:

Can you see the 74GB drive when you boot from the Win98 Startup diskette now?

 

Yep, I can see the HD. It's working well now. Thanks for the help