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From: kduling@nmsu.edu (Kevin Duling)
Newsgroups: comp.os.minix
Subject: DOS and Minix partitions
Message-ID: <1193@opus.NMSU.Edu>
Date: 3 May 91 00:53:56 GMT
Sender: news@NMSU.Edu
Lines: 36


   I'm having some rather serious problems between my Minix and DOS partitions.
First, let me say what I'm doing and then everyone can yell at me and tell me 
what stupid thing(s) I'm fudging.
   I've got a 32 Meg Seagate 138R harddrive which fdisk reports to have 939 
cylinders and 17 sectors.  I set part. 1 to 10M (10641k) and set that to Minix.
That's cylinders 0 through 312, btw.  Then I set part. 2 to 313 through 938
and made that my DOS partition.  I set it active, and wrote it.
   Ok...next I spent 4+ hours installing and testing Minix.  Everything works
great.  Then I switched over to DOS and formatted that partition, restoring my
files.  At this point I did some cleaning and purging of directories.  When I 
was done, I ran PCTools' Compress and Mirror to save my FAT.
   When I booted Minix next time, the whole fs was destroyed.  fdisk still 
reported that I had my partitions, and DOS ran just fine...but Minix was
trashed.
   The next time I tried, I removed all the partitions, formatted all 32M,
booted Minix from floppies and remade my partitions.  Then I formatted my DOS
partition, restored all the files (I use PCTools here, too), and backed up
both the FAT and the partition table with Mirror.
   I installed Minix again, from mkfs to setup_move.  It tested fine and 
it seemed to be perfect (I didn't run fsck at this point, tho).  I shut it down
and *tried* to boot DOS.  "Missing Operating System" is what I got.  Ok...I
ran Mirror to see what was wrong and it told me that my FAT was damaged.  So
I restored it.  Mirror ran, but it didn't fix anything.  I didn't get a 
'missing OS' message this time....I didn't get anything.  The machine was VERY
hung.  I quickly booted Minix to see if it was ok.  fsck barfed errors all over
the screen.
   I've owned this drive for 3 years, it has 0 bad sectors, and has *NEVER*
given me trouble.  So what's wrong?

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Kevin J. Duling                     UNIX                       kduling@nmsu.edu
New Mexico State University        VM/CMS               oprkjd@nmsuvm1.nmsu.edu
Computer Center/Large Systems       VMS                    CC4831@vaxa.nmsu.edu
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