Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!bonnie.concordia.ca!uunet!drivax!liberato
From: liberato@dri.com (Jimmy Liberato)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc.misc
Subject: Re: XT's and big hard drives -- PROBLEM
Message-ID: <NJF3XLV@dri.com>
Date: 24 May 91 20:56:14 GMT
References: <1991May15.071642.11071@lynx.CS.ORST.EDU> <1991May15.072231.11848@lynx.CS.ORST.EDU> <1991May21.175618.19307@qiclab.scn.rain.com>
Reply-To: liberato@dri.com (Jimmy Liberato)
Organization: Digital Research, Inc., Monterey Development Center
Lines: 27

leonard@qiclab.scn.rain.com (Leonard Erickson) writes:

>larsen@CAS.ORST.EDU (Scott Larsen) writes:

><I have an XT that I have a 40 meg hard disk in.  I am currently running
><ONTRACK'S Disk Manager to partition it off.  THis is under MS-DOS 3.2
><However, under 4.01 (The OS I would LIKE to use) disk manager causes
><the machine to crash.
><How can I use disk manager under 4.01 or use something else to get
><my machine to recognize a 40 meg hard disk?

>You only need a special driver for big drives on versions of DOS prior
>to 3.31. 3.31 and 4.xx support large partitions.

One further complication arises from using computers/controllers with
an ancient bios.  Old XT class machines just don't know how to deal
with a 40M hard drive.  Even if you use a DOS > 3.3 you will not be
able to use the full capacity.  You will pretty much need to use 
a software driver like Disk Manager and even then you will need to
do odd manuevers like having a miniscule boot partition (~1M) and
then allocating the rest to an extended partition.  By the way,
Disk Manager should not object to 4.01 unless you are using a very
obsolete version.

--
Jimmy Liberato   liberato@dri.com
                 ...uunet!drivax!liberato