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From: bqsy1@vax5.cit.cornell.edu (Andrew R. Orndorff, Cornell University)
Newsgroups: comp.os.msdos.misc
Subject: Low level formats of dynamically configured drives
Message-ID: <1991Apr3.222702.3848@vax5.cit.cornell.edu>
Date: 3 Apr 91 22:27:02 EDT
Distribution: comp
Organization: CIT, Cornell University
Lines: 31

       Perhaps someone can help me out here:

       I recently had to move my hard disk temporarily to make some fixes
to the motherboard. I must have done something to it because DOS can no
longer recognize the primary partition as bottable, though the FAT seems to
be okay.
       Before I go any further, let me describe this disk - I used a WD
MFM controller to format the drive dynamically into two separate drives,
one of 10 Mb and the other of 58 Mb. I then used FDISK to create a 3 Mb
primary partition on the first disk with a 7 Mb extended partition. The
second disk also has a 3 Mb primary partition and the rest as an extended
partition with 4 logical drives defined.
       So, to continue - I backed up the first disk as much as possible,
and then tried reformating using FORMAT, but that failed after formatting
only two tracks. Then I tried using FDISK to delete the partitions on the
first disk - that worked - and recreated the partiotns, and then rebooted
and attempted to format the first disk again - that still failed.
       Anyways, I'm guessing that I need to low-level format at least the
first disk. What I'm hoping is that I won't have to reformat the entire
physical disk. So, does anyone know if it is possible to just low level
format the first 'disk', or will I have to redo the entire disk. Time
constraints are such that I want to take the shortest possible route that I
can.
       Thanks in advance for any help.

--
       Andrew Orndorff
       CIT, Research & Analysis
       Cornell University
       Internet: bqsy1@vax5.cit.cornell.edu
       Bitnet:   bqsy1@crnlvax5