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From: ga1056@sdcc6.ucsd.edu (George D.T. Lu)
Newsgroups: comp.windows.ms
Subject: Re: Drive>1024 tracks
Message-ID: <17772@sdcc6.ucsd.edu>
Date: 25 Mar 91 18:09:19 GMT
References: <1991Mar25.104137.20709@agate.berkeley.edu>
Organization: University of California, San Diego
Lines: 50

In article <1991Mar25.104137.20709@agate.berkeley.edu> 128a-1ha@e260-4e.berkeley.edu writes:
>I just bought a hard drive with more than 1024 tracks.  Someone told me
>that Smartdrv won't operate with such a drive, is that true?
>
>The drive is a Connor CP-30104 (1522 tracks 4 head 39 sectors)
>
>Also I notice that fdisk only reconize 78meg (1024 track 4 head 39 sec)
>Is the only way to get the extra tracks is to use something like Disk Manager
>or SpeedStor, if so which one is better? (Must be compatible with Windows)
>
>Help! Help! Help!
>
>Nelson				128a-1ha@web.berkeley.edu

I just spent a part part of last week dealing this problem, the
solution was to find the low level formatter for the particluar disk
controller you are using.

I had a 40MB MFM HD and I used disk manager with DOS 3.3 with no
problem for a very long time. I recently bought a 120MB Microscience
120MB RLL drive (1314 cylinders, 7 heads, 26 sectors) together with a
OMTI RLL controller from Scientific Micro.  Using the Disk Manager
that came with the drive could format it to full capacity. The thing
is, the biggest primary DOS partition it would permit is only about
60MB, the rest have to go into the second partition (the sector
translation business).  I wanted to have a single partition and want
no problem with smartdrv.sys, so I quit out of Diskmanager after disk
initialization (before partitioning) and run fdisk.  But fdisk would
recognize the HD as something like (291 cylinders) x (more than 200
heads) x (a sector count that I cannot recall now).

I settled for Disk Manager for a week, running without smartdrv.sys,
and only in standard mode, until I found out there is another
formatter available on Scientific Micro's bulletin board.  It set up
my CMOS to the HD of the closet match, then wrote the correct HD
parameter onto the disk.  By that afternoon I was running enhancement
mode with smartdrv.sys again.

I understand that Western Digital 1006-SR2 has a formatter built-in
that can be involked using DEBUG.  If you have another controller like
I do, get the right formatter from the manufacturer (unless your
dealer is more helpful than mine) and remove that DMDRV.BIN from you
config.sys.

Hope that help.

George Lu
dlu@ucsd.edu
UC San Diego ECE Dept.
standard disclaimer apply.