Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!lll-winken!ames!killer!mjbtn!gsy1!root
From: root@gsy1.UUCP (Scott Yates N4BBB)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc
Subject: Re: Making a PC-XT hard-disk bootable again...
Summary: 2k versus 8k
Message-ID: <23@gsy1.UUCP>
Date: 6 Jan 89 03:13:10 GMT
References: <13186@duke.cs.duke.edu>
Organization: Yates Pest Control, Rockvale, TN, USA
Lines: 26

In article <13186@duke.cs.duke.edu>, gm@romeo.cs.duke.edu (Greg McGary) writes:
> A friend has a True-Blue PC-XT with PC-DOS 2.10.  I have a Hyundai 286c
> with MS-DOS 3.30.  Out of curiosity, I tried booting my MS-DOS 3.30
> floppy on the XT, and it worked.  I then got the bright idea that I
> would try to make the XT's hard disk boot up with DOS 3.30.  In that
> endeavor I failed, and in the process managed to mangle the DOS system
> stuff on the XT's hard-disk so that it won't boot from drive C:
> anymore.  It still boots fine from the floppy drive A: and the data on
> the C:  drive is fine.

Greg, I believe the problem is that dos 3.0 and above use 2k minimum
disk allocation units, and that 2.11 dos uses 8 k. A 1 byte file under dos
2.xx will use 8k of disk space. This is the 'slack' that Norton Utilities
reports in disk usage. One of the improvements incorporated in version
3.0 and above is the minimum disk allocation of 2k. Much more efficient way
of handling file space. 

To make the most of the upgrade, re-low-level the HD, create the partition,
and reformat with system (/s).


-- 
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