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GDisk:  External USB/FireWire Hard Disk Drive (Read 77433 times)
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Re: GDisk:  External USB/FireWire Hard Disk Drive
Reply #15 - Apr 11th, 2006 at 10:53am
 
Pleonasm

Quote:
Question #1:  Since GDisk does not operate using hard disk drive letters (e.g., “D:”) but disk ID numbers (e.g., “2”), ought it not to be the case that both DI1000DD.SYS and GUEST.EXE can be omitted from the boot floppy?


An interesting question--and by accident--I think I have an answer:

When I first created that floppy boot disk, I forgot to include *guest.exe*, which is the Ghost DOS driver that assigns drive letters during the booting of the *autoexec.bat* to either the USB HDD partitions or Firewire HDD partitions if the Ghost DOS drivers have first *mounted* the HDD's during the booting of *config.sys*.

So, I had a *file not found* error when I booted and *autoexec.bat* tried to load *guest.exe*.  But, I was at the A:\ prompt and thought I'd go ahead and run *gdisk.exe* just to see if the USB HDD was seen (along with the internal HDD's).  To my surprise--there was the Firewire HDD also!

Now that you have brought the question to light, I will have to go back and *rem* out *di1000dd.sys* and *guest.exe* and see what happens!

Quote:
Question #2:  What is the function of the switches (e.g., “/INT /ALL”), and where can I find documentation of all the switch options for ASPI1394.SYS?

When using Ghost's *Boot Wizard*--every boot floppy that has Firewire support has that line in the config.sys with those switches.  I've never seen any documentation regarding them.
 

No question is stupid...but, possibly the answers are  Wink !
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Re: GDisk:  External USB/FireWire Hard Disk Drive
Reply #16 - Apr 11th, 2006 at 6:15pm
 
Caution:  The version of ASPI1394.SYS downloaded from Gibson Research Corporation (see Reply #8 ) is 47,826 bytes, whereas the version extracted from the DATA.CAB file found in the RAR self-extracting archive NSW2005.EXE on the Norton SystemWorks 2006 Premier CD ("F6588_ASPI1394.SYS.A0EE8843_6A6D_4EAE_931B_F412EEDDF228") is 51,150 bytes (see Reply #9).

I infer that the version from Symantec may be more recent, since it is larger.
 

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Re: GDisk:  External USB/FireWire Hard Disk Drive
Reply #17 - Apr 13th, 2006 at 8:58am
 
Based on experimentation, I confirmed that
GUEST.EXE
is not needed on a boot floppy diskette for GDisk.

Additionally,
DI1000DD.SYS
in the
CONFIG.SYS
file is required for GDisk to properly detect an external USB hard disk drive – although the absence of
DI1000DD.SYS
does not interfere with GDisk detecting an external FireWire hard disk drive.

Since
DI1000DD.SYS
can only assign disk drive letters to hard disk drives formatted in FAT, and since
DI1000DD.SYS
is required for GDisk to detect external USB hard disk drives, I conjecture that external USB hard disk drives formatted in NTFS may not be able to be used with GDisk (although I have not tested this hypothesis).

The
CONFIG.SYS
file I have used contains these commands:
    DEVICE=ASPI1394.SYS /INT /ALL
    DEVICE=USBASPI.SYS /E /V
    LASTDRIVE=Z
    DEVICE=DI1000DD.SYS
The floppy diskette contains these files:
    12/17/2003 03:30 PM 051,150 ASPI1394.SYS
    06/08/2000 05:00 PM 093,040 COMMAND.COM
    04/11/2006 10:01 AM 000,055 CONFIG.SYS
    04/10/2006 01:39 PM 016,368 DI1000DD.SYS
    05/15/2001 06:57 PM 116,736 IO.SYS
    04/07/2001 01:40 PM 000,009 MSDOS.SYS
    11/07/2004 09:20 AM 039,179 USBASPI.SYS
    09/28/2005 02:20 PM 330,352 GDISK.EXE
 

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El_Pescador
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Re: GDisk:  External USB/FireWire Hard Disk Drive
Reply #18 - Apr 13th, 2006 at 10:00am
 
Pleonasm wrote on Apr 13th, 2006 at 8:58am:
"... Since
DI1000DD.SYS
can only assign disk drive letters to hard disk drives formatted in FAT, and since
DI1000DD.SYS
is required for GDisk to detect external USB hard disk drives, I conjecture that external USB hard disk drives formatted in NTFS may not be able to be used with GDisk (although I have not tested this hypothesis)...."

My experimentation along these lines was halted by Hurricane Katrina last August, but I seem to recall repeatedly using GDisk without any problem on different external enclosures containing HDDs configured in my customary fashion, i.e., a single extended partition containing a large logical NTFS partition and a smaller logical FAT32 partition.  Although I do not recall seeing specific drive letters (one way or the other), I vaguely seem to recollect that each partition was clearly identified.

The reason for using GDisk over and over with various HDDs (Maxtor, Seagate, and Western Digital) was in an effort to elicit speedier performance with FAT32 partitions when using Norton Ghost 2003 by reformatting the subject physical drives in an extraordinary manner.  The Western Digital line went from dead last in all aspects during my initial testing to becoming the leading performers for the applications of SLAVE HDD or mounting in an external enclosure kit.

I am on the road in Central Florida, so I will unable to provide meaningful input along these lines until I return home.

EP
Cry
 

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Re: GDisk:  External USB/FireWire Hard Disk Drive
Reply #19 - Apr 13th, 2006 at 11:13am
 
El_Pescador, I too am incredulous that GDisk would not work with an external hard disk drive formatted in NTFS and connected to the PC through USB.  It is, however, a logical consequence of what I have observed.

Please do report the results of your test, when you have a chance to do so.
 

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Re: GDisk:  External USB/FireWire Hard Disk Drive
Reply #20 - Apr 13th, 2006 at 11:34am
 
The seminal paper by Peter Gutmann (Department of Computer Science, University of Auckland) Secure Deletion of Data from Magnetic and Solid-State Memory (section 3) will be of interest to those readers who wish to more deeply understand the difficulty of erasing (i.e., wiping or sanitizing) a hard disk drive.
 

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Re: GDisk:  External USB/FireWire Hard Disk Drive
Reply #21 - Apr 14th, 2006 at 10:27am
 
Pleonasm

Quote:
Since DI1000DD.SYS can only assign disk drive letters to hard disk drives formatted in FAT, and since DI1000DD.SYS is required for GDisk to detect external USB hard disk drives,
I conjecture that external USB hard disk drives formatted in NTFS may not be able to be used with GDisk (although I have not tested this hypothesis).

Played around with this last night, and just as Ghost 2003 can work with NTFS partitions that are not assigned a DOS drive letter--so too can *gdisk*.

I can confirm your observations that *guest.exe* is not needed to assign drive letters for the Firewire HDD, but the *di1000dd.sys* is needed in conjunction with *Usbaspi.sys* for gdisk to work with USB HDD's in DOS.

The screen shots that I took are from using the freeware DOS Disk Editor Program
PTS Disk Editor
.  For some reason, I could not get the DOS screen shot saver program, Screen Thief, to take a snapshot of the *gdisk* screens--but the access to the HDD's was the same in both programs.

Here's a screen shot when I booted to DOS without the *di1000dd.sys*:

...

After adding back *di1000dd.sys*, now the 40 GB Iomega USB HDD shows up:

...

And here, I have edited the *Sector 1* with the label *Iomega USB HDD* so I can be sure which HDD I'm working with--and the arrow points to the *Disk ID* where one can *zero* it out so *sticky* drive letters in WinXP are *forgotten*:

...

I did not actually use the *wipe* function of *gdisk*, so I can not confirm that it actually worked successfully on either the FAT Iomega USB HDD or the Firewire HDD that has both a FAT partition and a NTFS partition--but the disk editor reported the full Firewire HDD size and allowed access to the whole drive, and the full size of the Firewire HDD was also reported in *gdisk*.

(Added 04/16/2006--Upon further evaluation--the *Disk Editor* could only access the FAT portion of the Adaptec USB HDD and not the NTFS partition--makes sense--a DOS disk editor should only *see* DOS compatible partitions--but as reported further down, *gdisk* does *see* the NTFS partition and can delete and/or wipe a USB HDD with NTFS partitions.)
 

No question is stupid...but, possibly the answers are  Wink !
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Re: GDisk:  External USB/FireWire Hard Disk Drive
Reply #22 - Apr 14th, 2006 at 10:40am
 
NightOwl, thanks for confirming the dependency between USBASPI.SYS and DI1000DD.SYS (i.e., both are required for GDisk to detect an external USB hard disk drive), and that GUEST.EXE is not needed when using GDisk.

To clarify, have you confirmed GDisk will detect a NTFS USB external hard disk drive with DI1000DD.SYS loaded in the CONFIG.SYS file?

I will run “GDisk # /DISKWIPE /DOD” this weekend on an external FireWire hard disk drive, and report back the results.
 

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Re: GDisk:  External USB/FireWire Hard Disk D
Reply #23 - Apr 15th, 2006 at 12:59am
 
Pleonasm

Quote:
To clarify, have you confirmed GDisk will detect a NTFS USB external hard disk drive with DI1000DD.SYS loaded in the CONFIG.SYS file?

My Iomega USB HDD was partitioned as a logical HDD within an Extended Partition as FAT32.

In WinXP, Disk Management, I re-formated the logical HDD as NTFS.

Booted with the Panasonic DOS USB drivers.  The *di1000dd.sys* assigned it a drive letter of J:\--but with 0 MB listed.  If I tried to access the HDD drive letter J:\, DOS returns a *volume not found* error.

The *gdisk /status*command line showed it as Disk #3, Partitions = 2 (Extended *Primary* and the Logical NTFS within), 38166.7 MB, etc.

The *gdisk 3 /status* command line showed Partition 1 as Type = Extended, 38154.4 MB, and Partition 2 as Type = Logical, 38154.3 MB, System = NTFS/HPFS.

And then typed *gdisk 3 /diskwipe* command line and as I type this (I'm on a different computer), it is about 40 % completed wiping disk 3.

So, apparently Gdisk does not have a problem with USB HDD's that are NTFS on the partitions, just has to be *seen*.  Apparently *di1000dd.sys* assigns a drive letter that DOS can not see, but makes the HDD visible to *Gdisk*, and allows for using the *wipe* function.
 

No question is stupid...but, possibly the answers are  Wink !
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Re: GDisk:  External USB/FireWire Hard Disk Drive
Reply #24 - Apr 15th, 2006 at 1:41am
 
Pleonasm

And, the process completed without any problems--reported that both partitions had been deleted and the disk wiped.

I ran the DOS disk editor and confirmed that all entries that were present previously were *zeroed out*.
 

No question is stupid...but, possibly the answers are  Wink !
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Re: GDisk:  External USB/FireWire Hard Disk Drive
Reply #25 - Apr 16th, 2006 at 1:23pm
 
NightOwl, your test does confirm that GDisk will detect a NTFS USB external hard disk drive with DI1000DD.SYS loaded in the CONFIG.SYS file.  That is quite handy to know, and makes the GDisk floppy diskette useful in a broad range of circumstances.

For readers of this thread, note that GDisk does not issue a prompt asking the user to confirm the /DISKWIPE operation – the erase simply starts.  For this reason, it is critical that the correct disk ID number be specified in the GDisk command line.
 

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Re: GDisk:  External USB/FireWire Hard Disk Drive
Reply #26 - Apr 16th, 2006 at 2:23pm
 
Pleonasm wrote on Apr 16th, 2006 at 1:23pm:
"... For readers of this thread, note that GDisk does not issue a prompt asking the user to confirm the /DISKWIPE operation – the erase simply starts.  For this reason, it is critical that the correct disk ID number be specified in the GDisk command line..."
Truer words are seldom spoken !!!
 

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Re: GDisk:  External USB/FireWire Hard Disk Drive
Reply #27 - Apr 18th, 2006 at 2:44pm
 
Pleonasm

Did a little more testing and thought I'd report the results.

The Symantec Ghost 2003 DOS Firewire driver *ASPI1394.SYS* does allow *Gdisk* to access the Firewire HDD in DOS, and will allow the DOS disk editor (
PTS Disk Editor
) to access and also see and load at least the *boot sector* of the HDD--whether its formatted as FAT or NTFS.

But, just as the Symantec Ghost 2003 DOS USB HDD drivers, *ASPI1394.SYS* Firewire HDD driver does not allow one to run PartitionMagic's DOS based program--it reports an error saying there is a HDD size/BIOS incompatibility and PartitionMagic will not even complete loading and errors back to the A:\ prompt.

Disconnect the Firewire HDD and PartitionMagic loads fine.  And, change the Adaptec Enclosure from Firewire to USB, and now, using the Panasonic USB DOS drivers, PartitionMagic loads fine, and will access the same HDD in the Enclosure kit as a USB device that it refused to access as a Firewire device.  And all PartitionMagic functions are available and work on the USB HDD.
 

No question is stupid...but, possibly the answers are  Wink !
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Re: GDisk:  External USB/FireWire Hard Disk D
Reply #28 - May 15th, 2006 at 12:13pm
 
Pleonasm wrote on Apr 16th, 2006 at 1:23pm:
NightOwl, your test does confirm that GDisk will detect a NTFS USB external hard disk drive with DI1000DD.SYS loaded in the CONFIG.SYS file.  That is quite handy to know, and makes the GDisk floppy diskette useful in a broad range of circumstances.

For readers of this thread, note that GDisk does not issue a prompt asking the user to confirm the /DISKWIPE operation – the erase simply starts.  For this reason, it is critical that the correct disk ID number be specified in the GDisk command line.


As an alternative, you can use the Darik's Boot and Nuke Disk
http://dban.sourceforge.net/

The really good thing about it, is that it all fits on a floppy and using linux as and OS. So it does not need even need one operating Hard drive on the computer to work, and it should be able to find most Hard drives and wipe them.

It's good, for those times, when just re-installing a OS does not work, due to something messing up the process.

Have used it many times, for wiping Hard disks before re-installing OS's. It works like a dream.
 
 
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Re: GDisk:  External USB/FireWire Hard Disk D
Reply #29 - Jun 8th, 2006 at 5:50pm
 
El_Pescador wrote on Apr 10th, 2006 at 4:11pm:
I recollect a DOD wipe on an 80GB IDE Seagate HDD going well past overnight, so I would allocate at 24-36 hours at the very least to be on the safe side.
Cry


I tried "Delete and Secure Erase" from Partition Magic yesterday. I don't know how this compares to your DOD wipe but I imagine it is similar. I tried it on two HDs in the computer I'm returning to Dell. I monitored HD temperature with HDTune. The base HD temperature was 40° C but within a few minutes of starting  Delete and Secure Erase, the temperature had risen to 55° C and I aborted. Only 1% progress had been made. The same thing happened with the other HD.

After 24-36 hours I'd just have two blobs of molten metal but certainly securely erased.
 
 
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