[protonsix]

Hello readers,

This is my first post here. Forgive my ettiquette please.

I use a legacy Pentium Pro 200, 440FX chipset, S3 Trio 64V+ video, P50 IBM monitor, 160 MB RAM and new 40 GB HDD.

I am getting warnings from Power Quest products that my system is not suited up correctly for large partitions. My drive came with a very clumsy product (IMHO) sector translation product named Drive Manager. I have to use this because of my legacy BIOS etc. Power Q says my extended partitions beyond the 2^10th cylinder should be marked extendedX. This makes sense: big guys need X- sized tee-shirts.

Possibly there other issues pending. During backups PQ bleeps that the partition's "reserved inode has bad mode".

These concerns may or may not be related to the problem my Mandrake 8.2 "disappears" from the HDD. I wisely boot only from a Linux floppy. I get the message implying that the beginning of Linux is not at the place on the disk it was last time. PANIC button.

I suspect some changes I made to partitions beyond the Linux area for Windows' benefit fouled something up.

This seems to be a case of multiple issues. Any helpful comments will be sincerely appreciated.

Roland Watts

[protonsix]

Hello readers,

After posting I searched Google for the installation jumper instructions for my new drive. The instruction pdf looked new to me I confess.

It seems my jumper settings are different from those in the pdf.

I wonder if the jumper fix will banish the partition mischief!! Probably so.

Roland

[codejockey]

It's quite likely that incorrect jumper settings would play havoc with an O/S. It's sometimes difficult to know what the correct settings are, however. My last two drives have featured setup instructions that conflicted with the information printed on the drive label. Sometimes it really is a matter of trial and error.

Although incorrect drive settings aren't the only possible cause for O/S difficulties, it certainly makes sense to get this part right before trying much else.

Hope this helps.

[protonsix]

Hi codejockey,

Thanks for the encouraging feedback.

Things are improving after I tried the setting for master drive, with slave present, 16-head flavor.

Not someone to try only one change at a time, I played the "monkey-at-the-typewriter composing a Shakespearean sonnet" game.

I pushed the buttons like crazy in the Ranish Partition Manager, the Win NT Disk (partition) Administrator, the partition clone to/from CD program. Just for zest, I grabbed an alphabetic mixture of parameters to specify in setting up the sector translator!

I attempted to get dual copies of NT running. It was a failure. The darn clone program wanted to play hide-and-seek with some of the partitions. Not knowing what to do, I tried to unhide them with Ranish.

I gave this effort up for dead-on-arrival.

For reasons beyond my understanding, the PC booted nicely after a short nap with two copies of NT installed and selectable at startup! First and second primary partitions for NT. A cool third primary for Linux. Then the extended partition out to the disk's end.

What trouble lurks next in this PC? I am suspicious of things working too well.

Roland