Hi. I have installed Debian GNU/Linux 1.3.1 (from the Linux
System Labs CD-ROM) and now the D: drive is unreadable by
Windows 95...
I have a 2-gigabyte hard disk that has more than 1024 cylinders.
Since it was originally installed with a 486 motherboard with
a BIOS that couldn't handle more than 1024 cylinders, I installed
a patch from the disk's manufacturer. Today, this hard disk is
installed with a Pentium motherboard with a modern BIOS, but the
patch is still there.
The first quarter of the disk is C:.
The second quarter used to contain a FreeBSD system; it is in
an undefined state at this time.
The third quarter contains Debian.
The fourth quarter is D:.
In terms of DOS FDISK, the primary partition covers the
first quarter. The extended partition covers the last
_half_ of the disk, for "historical reasons"...
The end of Debian's quarter is the /usr filesystem.
I had to format it manually with mke2fs by specifying
explicitly the number of blocks. I used the number of
blocks that Linux's fdisk displayed for /usr.
The installation of Debian went well, but when I
rebooted, DOS/Windows 95 could not read D: anymore
(General failure reading drive D:).
I went into DOS FDISK. This is the partition table that it
displayed:
Partition Status Type Volume Label Mbytes System Usage
C: 1 A PRI DOS DISK1_VOL1 478 FAT16 25%
2 Non-DOS 478 25%
3 EXT DOS 937 49%
Total disk space is 1914 Mbytes (1 Mbyte = 1048576 bytes)
The Extended DOS Partition contains Logical DOS Drives.
This is the Logical DOS Drive Information that FDISK displayed:
Drv Volume Label Mbytes System Usage
D: 478 UNKNOWN 51%
The UNKNOWN used to be FAT16. The volume label used to be
DISK1_VOL1. I haven't lost much in that drive, but it would be
less trouble if I could recover the contents.
Is it possible that if I could change that UNKNOWN back to
FAT16, D: would become readable again and its filesystem could
be intact? If yes, then how can I force this change?
If I reformat D: under DOS, could this corrupt Debian and/or
its /usr filesystem?
Can I use BIOS calls to try to read the tracks that correspond
to drive D: to try to recover a few files (if the filesystem
happens to be intact)? I suppose that would be Interrupt 13h,
service 02h.
--
Pierre Sarrazin <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> [Montreal]
--
TO UNSUBSCRIBE FROM THIS MAILING LIST: e-mail the word "unsubscribe" to
[EMAIL PROTECTED] .
Trouble? e-mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] .
