Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!munnari!otc!metro!basser!nswitgould!nick
From: nick@nswitgould.OZ (Nick Andrew)
Newsgroups: comp.os.minix
Subject: Re: Minix with 40 meg drive
Message-ID: <8515@nswitgould.OZ>
Date: 11 Apr 88 08:49:58 GMT
References: <1975@louie.udel.EDU>
Organization: Comp Sci, NSWIT, Australia
Lines: 52

In article <1975@louie.udel.EDU>, gpflaum%UMASS.BITNET@mitvma.mit.edu (Greg Pflaum) says:
> 
> I need some help getting minix to work with my 40 meg hard disk.
> ...
> This 40 meg disk has 6 heads and 809 cylinders, which is over the
> 32 meg DOS limit.  The low level format program lets me either format
> the whole disk or split it so that DOS thinks it sees two disks.

	Low-level format your drive so it is one drive. I thought the
low level format was the same whether it is to be (to messydos) one or two
drives. I haven't written to the last 8 mb of my drive with Minix yet :-)

> If I format the whole disk I can't use the regular DOS FDISK, and have
> to use a special XFDISK which can handle the larger disk.

	Use DOS fdisk to set up the size of dos partition that you like.
Eg: I don't have a dos partition at all :-)

> Here's the problem: I can't set up a Minix partition without clobbering
> a DOS partition.

	Don't worry about it. After the partitions are set up how you like
them, copy the dos back onto the hard disk.

>                   /dev/hd5 doesn't work when I use the low level format
> to look like two disks, and /dev/hd2 gives me errors when I try to do
> mkfs.

	/dev/hd5-9 looks at the second PHYSICAL drive. dos LOGICAL drives
have nothing to do with Minix!

	/dev/hd1-4 are the first to fourth partitions of the first
physical drive. You cannot run mkfs on them until you have some Minix
partitions set up.

>       I have recompiled fdisk for 6 heads.  I've tried putting Minix in
> the first partition, which works but messes up the DOS side.

	Did you reverse the order of the "overlap" tests at the end of Fdisk?
Check and ensure that, reading from the bottom up, there is no overlap and
the number of sectors counted by fdisk is the number which are actually
stored in the partition (ie N cylinders = N * 17 * H sectors).

	Don't forget mkfs uses BLOCKS as its size parameter, 1k blocks, not
sectors. I got hung up for a while wondering why I couldn't format more than
about 10,000 sectors per partition.

	Nick.

> Any suggestions?

	Wait for Minix 2.0 ?