Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!cs.utexas.edu!swrinde!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!uakari.primate.wisc.edu!ames!amdahl!drivax!liberato From: liberato@drivax.UUCP (Jimmy Liberato) Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc Subject: Re: Avoid mangling your hard drive with DMDRVR.BIN Message-ID: Date: 14 Apr 90 03:14:52 GMT References: <18605@boulder.Colorado.EDU> <10343@portia.Stanford.EDU> Reply-To: liberato@drivax.UUCP (Jimmy Liberato) Organization: Digital Research, Inc., Monterey, California Lines: 45 eggbert@bucsf.bu.edu (Eugene Wang) writes: >>>>>> On 5 Apr 90 21:47:48 GMT, geoff@usafa.af.mil (Capt Geoff Mulligan) said: >> So then what is dmdrvr.bin for? What does diskmanager do different >> from fdisk when you partition a drive?... >> >> Also where are the partition names stored? >DMDRVR.BIN contains the partition information for your hard disk. Try >removing it from your CONFIG.SYS file. If you try to access anything except >the C: drive, DOS gives you the `Invalid drive specification' error. >[...] >FDISK stores the partition information on the disk, while DM does it in >the driver, but then the driver only takes up 2-4K anyway. > >I think the partition names are stored in DMDRVR.BIN but I'm not sure. Can anyone comment on this? It is not readily apparent to me that the partition information is stored in DMDRVR.BIN. On the one occaision in which I temporarily moved the directory which contained all my drivers to an extended partition (clever!) I was able to rescue myself by borrowing another DMDRVR.BIN from a completely foreign and differently configured system. I was able to access the extended partitions with no difficulty. The two files were of different size, however. But either worked. The responses to my original question have revealed several reasons for Disk Manager/DMDRVR.BIN being used: 1) To allow extended partitions under pre-DOS 3.3 2) To allow partitions greater than 32 Meg under pre-DOS 4.0 3) To allow full utilization of drives with greater than 1024 cylinders. 4) Its automated installation procedure is easy and convenient for dealers and system integrators, hence its prevalence even on systems that might not actually REQUIRE it. If none of the above are important considerations then it is preferable to use FDISK for the partitioning (Disk Manager can still be used for the low level format via its manual mode). -- Jimmy Liberato ...!amdahl!drivax!liberato