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FAT32 not visible in DOS (Read 57906 times)
schmirk
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Re: FAT32 not visible in DOS
Reply #15 - Feb 11th, 2011 at 12:48am
 
Quote:
Maybe you could try BootIt from a floppy as I doubt your computer will boot from USB.

BootIt was from a floppy too. Do you think the CD version will do any different?

Alternatives are popping into my head now in case no light is shed on this. Is there a reliable way to do partition imaging from within XP if I am multi-booting? Goes against what I have been taught what with XPs wild disk accessing.

It is an old board but there are USB options in BIOS for first boot device. Not sure if any of these would accept a flash drive.
USB-FDD, USB-ZIP, USB-CDROM, USB-HDD.
 

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Re: FAT32 not visible in DOS
Reply #16 - Feb 11th, 2011 at 2:45am
 
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schmirk wrote on Feb 11th, 2011 at 12:48am:
Do you think the CD version will do any different?

Probably not as the floppy saw 3 HDs but why not try it. There is a new beta BootIt BM which works in Protected Mode and can directly access the drives via BIOS (direct). It could be worth trying. Run it from the floppy or CD. Don't install.

http://www.terabyteunlimited.com/downloads/beta/bootitbm_en.zip

Others have suggested a partinfo from DOS. With that zip you downloaded, put partinfo.exe on a boot floppy. Boot to an A: prompt and type

partinfo > a:\partinfo.txt   
(press Enter)

Can you attach the file partinfo.txt to a post. It will be fairly large.
 
 
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Dan Goodell
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Re: FAT32 not visible in DOS
Reply #17 - Feb 11th, 2011 at 3:48am
 
I think it would also help to take a look at exactly what's in the 500GB's MBR sector.  Maybe there's something unusual in there that could be hindering DOS.

Get Roadkil's Sector Editor, a nice utility that runs from XP.  Extract the secedit.exe and put it on your desktop, then double-click to launch.  In the 'Select Disk' window, scroll down and select "Physical 1".  Cut and paste the resulting screenshot here for us to take a look at.


 
 
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Re: FAT32 not visible in DOS
Reply #18 - Feb 11th, 2011 at 5:52pm
 
Hi Dan! Thanks for joining the party. I never noticed the 16bil terabytes. That was DiskCheckup's read.

'Largest' drive is 500gb. Currently xp disk manager shows 0-232gb, 1-465gb, 2-232gb. Pulled last HD for the CDburner.

Quote:
Yikes!!  Never use PM8 from Windows!

500gb drive was partitioned with PM8 from windows then formatted in xp. Thanks for letting me in on that. But that was last year for drive-1. I am currently reformatting my OS on drive-0.

Quote:
Mudcrab's Reply #10:  "what does the PARTINFO.EXE program report when run from DOS/Win98?"
Hi Mudcrab, I totally didnt see your post. (thanks for the syntax Brian.)

====================================================================
           MBR Partition Information (HD1 - 0x00000000)
                         (CHS: 1023/239/63)
+====+====+=============+====+=============+===========+===========+
| 0: |  0 |    0   0  0 |  0 |    0   0  0 |         0 |         0 |
| 1: |  0 |    0   0  0 |  0 |    0   0  0 |         0 |         0 |
| 2: |  0 |    0   0  0 |  0 |    0   0  0 |         0 |         0 |
| 3: |  0 |    0   0  0 |  0 |    0   0  0 |         0 |         0 |
+====+====+=============+====+=============+===========+===========+


And Dan with all other drives disconnected:

====================================================================
           MBR Partition Information (HD0 - 0x00000000)
                         (CHS: 1023/239/63)
+====+====+=============+====+=============+===========+===========+
| 0: |  0 |    0   0  0 |  0 |    0   0  0 |         0 |         0 |
| 1: |  0 |    0   0  0 |  0 |    0   0  0 |         0 |         0 |
| 2: |  0 |    0   0  0 |  0 |    0   0  0 |         0 |         0 |
| 3: |  0 |    0   0  0 |  0 |    0   0  0 |         0 |         0 |
+====+====+=============+====+=============+===========+===========+


A little different through the eyes of the BIOS compared to the XP based partinfo.


I tried the BING beta floppy - EMBRL 4.00 (see pic)

Edit: I forgot the setting BIOS (direct) New pic replaced original below with drive access. Wow, our first success! Good eye Brian.

And SectEdit in XP.  (see pic)




 

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Re: FAT32 not visible in DOS
Reply #19 - Feb 11th, 2011 at 7:10pm
 
In the beta BootIt, click the Bus drop down arrow and change BIOS to BIOS (direct). Does that allow you to see the partitions as it should bypass the BIOS and read the drive.
 
 
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Re: FAT32 not visible in DOS
Reply #20 - Feb 11th, 2011 at 8:30pm
 
Success! Thanks Brian, I modified the picture in my last post.
 

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Re: FAT32 not visible in DOS
Reply #21 - Feb 11th, 2011 at 8:42pm
 
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Great work. Now I hope someone can explain what it means!
 
 
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Re: FAT32 not visible in DOS
Reply #22 - Feb 11th, 2011 at 9:24pm
 
Okay, now that's troubling, all those zeroes in Reply #18.  Yet the secedit screenshot clearly shows there is a diskID and a properly defined extended partition.  The PartInfo should have shown "HD1 - 0x96FCA669" at the top, and should have shown the numbers for the lone primary partition in row 0 of the table.  (The disk has a single primary partition of type-0F (extended), so for the sake of this discussion we need to get that one partition to be seen before we can even talk about the logical volumes within it.)

I think I'd explore two possibilities at this point: either the BIOS doesn't support a disk of that size, or the empty MBR may be causing DOS or the BIOS to think the disk is uninitialized.


BIOS issue:  Go back to the Terabyte site and download DiskInfo.  Extract the .exe and put it where you can run it from DOS.  Boot into DOS, locate the diskinfo.exe and run it from the command prompt:

    diskinfo  >  diskinfo.txt

This will capture the DiskInfo report in a text file.  If you have more than one hard disk attached, edit out the sections about the other disks so the report isn't so long.  You should have two sections, one headed "* * B I O S * *" and one headed "* * A T A * *".  Then post the diskinfo.txt report here.  Indications are your mobo has a weird kind of BIOS, so I don't know if this will reveal anything, but it's worth a look.


MBR issue:  The secedit reveals there is no MBR boot code above the partition table.  Theoretically, that's not supposed to matter because you're never booting from that disk.  But if you've got a weird BIOS, we can't rule out the possibility your BIOS thinks the disk is uninitialized if it doesn't see MBR code.  That feels like a longshot to me, but there's absolutely no harm in putting MBR code in there so you might as well do it so we can rule out that possibility.

You can use BING to insert a standard MBR to the master boot sector.  (In 'Partition Work', click 'View MBR', click 'Std MBR', then apply the change.)

Try that, then repeat both the DiskInfo and PartInfo reports to see if it made a difference.

Addendum:  I see you've replaced the "all zeroes" BING screenshot while I was writing this.  With the new screenshot, it's looking more like a BIOS issue.

BTW, your Disk-2 is a 250GB . . . does it also have only an extended partition?  If it also has empty MBR code, it might be useful to compare these same tests between the 500GB and the 250GB.  (We know Disk-0 has MBR code, so comparisons with Disk-0 won't tell us anything.)





 
 
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Re: FAT32 not visible in DOS
Reply #23 - Feb 12th, 2011 at 12:15am
 
I am getting a hunch I will need a BIOS(direct) drive imaging utility. Strange though because I have not come across a reference to DOS size limit that falls after 232GB but before 476GB. I specifically asked at the MSI forum about a BIOS limit in this mobo thinking they would be able to look it up with ease but did not get confirmation.

Drive-2(single extended, single logical NTFS 232GB) displays a MBR through regular BIOS access and PartINFO details that I did not include above to save space here.

The Drive-1 PartINFO(blank) and DiskINFO before and after inserting a standard MBR in both BIOS and BIOS(direct) did not change.

Here is the DiskInfo for Drive-1. The only difference when comparing to the other drives I noticed is a lot less cylinders a lot more spt when calculating 'total sectors' in the RAW extensions info. Drives 0 and 2 are:
16643 cylinders, 255 heads, 63 spt = 267369795 total sectors.



                               DISKINFO 1.03

                      * * * * * * B I O S * * * * * *

Item 2 Device 81 - Hard Drive
  Basic BIOS Information:
    1024 cylinders, 240 heads, 63 spt = 15482880 sectors
    Maximum BIOS (CHS) LBA: 15482879
    512 bytes per sector
    476940 MB, 976773168 total sectors
    Maximum LBA: 976773167
  Raw Extensions Test
    Version: 2.1
    Support: DISKACCESS EDD
    Result 26: 26
    Result 30: 30
    Result 74: 30
    4095 cylinders, 240 heads, 255 spt = 250614000 total sectors
  Extended BIOS Information:
    Support: DISKACCESS EDD
    Info: EXGEOVALID
    EDD 2.1 Information:
      Device 1, IO Address 1F0h/3F6h, LBA Enabled
      IRQ 14, DMA Channel 0, DMA Mode 2, PIO Mode 4
      FASTPIO DMA MULTI16 CHSTRANS LBADIRECT 32BIT



                       * * * * * * A T A * * * * * *

Item 1 ATA Hard Drive
  IOAddress 0x1F0/0x170, Device 16, Channel 0, Info 0x10, Flag 0x1
  WDC WD5000AAKB-00H8A0
  65535 cylinders, 1 heads, 63 spt = 4128705 sectors
  CHS1: 1023 cylinders, 64 heads, 63 spt
  CHS2: 1024 cylinders, 255 heads, 63 spt
  512 bytes per sector
  476940 MB, 976773168 total sectors
  Details:
    SN:      WD-WCASY9555336
    Firmware: 05.04E05
    Model: WDC WD50
    Multi Transfer (47): 16
    Capabilities: DMA LBA IORDY- IORDY STDBYTIMER
    Multi Transfer (59): 16
    268435455 total sectors
    MW DMA - Support: DMA0 DMA1 DMA2   Active:
    MW DMA cycle times: 120/120
    PIO Support:PIO3 PIO4
    PIO cycle times: 120/120
    Queue Depth: 0
    ATA-8/No sub version
    Supports (82): SMART SEC PWR WC LA HPA WB RB NOP
    Supports (83): DLMC PSB SFEA SETMAX AAM 48BIT DCOVL FLUSH FLUSHEX
    Supports (84): SMARTLOG SMARTST GPLOG
    Enabled (85): SMART PWR WC LA HPA WB RB NOP
    Enabled (86): DLMC SFEA 48BIT DCOVL FLUSH FLUSHEX
    Enabled (87): SMARTLOG SMARTST GPLOG
    UDMA Support: UDMA0 UDMA1 UDMA2 UDMA3 UDMA4 UDMA5
    UDMA Enabled: UDMA5
    Time requred for sec erase unit complete: 57
    Time requred for enh sec erase unit complete: 57
    APM value: 0
    Master PW Revision Code: 65534
    Device Selection: Jumper
    Acoustic Values - Recommended: 128 Current: 254
    Total Sectors 48bit: 0x03A386030
    Security Status: SUPORTED

 

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Re: FAT32 not visible in DOS
Reply #24 - Feb 12th, 2011 at 12:44am
 
schmirk wrote on Feb 12th, 2011 at 12:15am:
I am getting a hunch I will need a BIOS(direct) drive imaging utility. 

Just a comment on this statement. TeraByte's IFD has BIOS (Direct) capability. TeraByte's IFL accesses the HD directly without using the BIOS. BootIt BM is for "imminent" release and the final version will include IFD which will run from the BootIt desktop.

Edit... There is a 30 day trial for IFD, IFL.
 
 
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Re: FAT32 not visible in DOS
Reply #25 - Feb 12th, 2011 at 1:24am
 
I just noticed Drives 0 and 2 have 255 heads. Drive 1 has 240 heads. Weird.
 
 
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Re: FAT32 not visible in DOS
Reply #26 - Feb 12th, 2011 at 4:17am
 
Well, I see no smoking gun in Reply #23.  Both the BIOS and ATA sections show "476940 MB, 976773168 total sectors".  That's where I would have expected a discrepancy might have shown up if there was a BIOS limitation -- ATA would show the full, correct value and BIOS would show some lower number.  (I think most of the other geometry and sector totals are conditional responses in case the calling BIOS doesn't support 48-bit LBA mode, and they seem to congregate around the expected 8GB and 137GB limits.)  The fact the BIOS section does show the full LBA count at all means it must have at least made the correct 48-bit ATAPI function call to the disk.

That doesn't necessarily prove the BIOS supports 48-bit LBA *correctly* -- it is an old BIOS, after all, so it could be a buggy, early implementation -- but there's nothing in the DiskInfo report to implicate the BIOS.  (48-bit LBA was adopted as a standard in the late 90's.)

Nevertheless, all the other evidence points to the BIOS as the source of the problem.

While it's possible for a DOS program to use its own disk driver, most DOS programs simply use the 16-bit "Real Mode" disk driver built into the BIOS so the programmers can avoid "reinventing the wheel".  But that means that if the BIOS is the problem, programs that rely on the BIOS driver are going to be victimized by that problem.  PM8, Ghost 2002, and PartInfo are DOS programs, and don't see the partitions.  In its normal mode, BING also uses the BIOS driver, and didn't see the partitions.

Programs that use their own driver will bypass the BIOS and thus avoid any BIOS problem.  Apparently the BING v2 beta can use its own driver when in "BIOS (direct)" mode, and it saw the partitions.  (That's a new option that isn't in the earlier versions I'm familiar with.)  Windows is a 32-bit (or 64-bit) "Protected Mode" platform, so using the 16-bit BIOS driver is not an option.  Windows has to use its own disk driver.  As of XP-SP1 the Windows driver fully supports 48-bit LBA (i.e., disks larger than 137GB) and of course accesses the disk directly, not through the BIOS.  Windows sees the partitions.  Every application that runs in Windows and uses the Windows driver, such as PartInfW, also sees the partitions.

I think the evidence is consistent and compelling: the BIOS is probably the culprit.  You can spend more time trying to pinpoint a diagnose or trying to come up with a fix, but doing all that just to run Ghost 2002 doesn't seem cost-effective to me.  You could still run into a Ghost disk size limit, and I believe the NTFS version used by XP wasn't fully supported until v2003.  Very good partition imagers for little or no money are widely available, so the practical solution is to say goodbye to Ghost 2002.

Windows-based cloning/imaging utilities work well in most scenarios, and won't use the BIOS driver.  Personally, I have a philosophical aversion to using a Windows-based utility to image the active Windows partition, but the evidence shows it does work.  But I have no reservations using a Windows-based tool to image *another* partition (i.e., not the one I'm booted from), and since all my systems multiboot, it's very easy for me to image OS "A" while booted into OS "B", and vice versa.

If you prefer to stick with non-Windows imagers, you'll have to find one that doesn't use the BIOS driver.  At the moment, the only possibilities that come to mind are something linux based, or perhaps the forthcoming BING v2 (because of the direct access option).  That's still in beta, but Brian can tell you more than I can about what it may eventually be able to do.

If you're not quite ready to give up on Ghost 2002 yet, I can think of only two additional diagnostic avenues I'd consider exploring.  (1) It's a Western Digital disk, so you could download WDC's DLG ("Data Lifeguard Diagnostics"), let it examine the disk, and/or poke through the disk's firmware settings to see if anything looks out of place.  (2) Since we suspect some kind of disk size limitation, you could tinker with the disk's SETMAX setting to artificially reduce the apparent disk size to see if there's a point where the partition table magically reappears.  SETMAX can be modified with DLG or other tools like HDAT2 and FTOOL.  (Note that would only serve to confirm the source of the problem.  Artificially reducing the disk size is not a practical solution.)





 
 
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Re: FAT32 not visible in DOS
Reply #27 - Feb 12th, 2011 at 1:57pm
 
I believe the diagnostics are done. Grin An effective work around has been established. You guys have been great and have brought this noob along tremendously into the "Next Generation" of increasing capacity HD technology.

As of this morning Ghost 2002 is officially retired from my system.

Terabyte IFD trial floppy:
With a successful image of MO1 XP install partition to the GH1 partition then clone back to the MO2 partition, error free instant multibooting is back on my machine and Terabyte is in the drivers seat now.

Considering the image took 1 minute to make and 38 seconds to clone I believe the time investment into this inquiry will be repaid in rather short order when compared to a 10 minute ordeal with Ghost each way.

I have to thank Night Owl for his hilarious comment regarding his adopting Terabyte's Suite on the other thread you recommended:
Quote:
I just ordered their complete suite--steep learning curve ahead--but, always like a challenge  Wink  (NightOwl rocking back and forth chanting *Change is good!  Change is good!........)!
(http://radified.com/cgi-bin/yabb2/YaBB.pl?num=1290692291/30)

might be time for a new Rad guide...


And Brian, your recommendations really came through, plus you have earned Terabyte another satisfied customer.

Dan, how did you learn all that? lol. And thank you. You articulate very well the depth of HD knowledge that has found its way into your head.

Smiley Cheers to you all!

Brandon


 

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Re: FAT32 not visible in DOS
Reply #28 - Feb 12th, 2011 at 2:16pm
 
Brandon,

I'm glad it has worked out. Very, very interesting thread.

As mentioned in the other thread, buy the TeraByte Bundle. Best value around.
 
 
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Re: FAT32 not visible in DOS
Reply #29 - Feb 12th, 2011 at 9:13pm
 
Glad to hear your decision, and welcome to the "Next Generation"!  Not to rain on your revelry, but you may not be out of the woods yet.   Wink

The diskmgmt screenshot in Reply #2 shows you have separate 'System' and 'Boot' partitions, which suggests you might be using a Microsoft-style dual-boot.  That's not a true dual-boot, and creates special considerations (and problems) for cloning and imaging.  You can read more about this at www.goodells.net/multiboot/principles.shtml and www.goodells.net/multiboot/partsigs.shtml.

Since you've already tried cloning MO1 to MO2, you're in a position to explore the hazards of Microsoft's pseudo dual-booting debacle.  Try changing some of the system settings (such as changing the background wallpaper, or changing the drive letter of one of your data partitions), then reboot into the other OS and see if things also changed in the other OS.  In a true dual-boot, changes in one OS should *not* affect the other OS.

Glad to hear you like Terabyte's stuff.  I've been a Terabyte customer since 2002.  Note that BING (when installed to the hard disk) is a true multi-boot manager.  I think that's ultimately what you'll want to use for your dual-booting, but first you'll have to get rid of the Microsoft-style dual-boot.  Unfortunately, that usually means wiping the Windows partition and starting over, reinstalling XP from scratch.  Once you get a clean, single-boot installation on C:, it's relatively easy to clone it to as many other partitions as you want.


 
 
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