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Article #1084

Hard disk problem on Rainbow

#1084
From: Roger Hammerquist
Date: Mon, 03 Jun 1991 19:42
23 lines
1748 bytes
Greetings, helpful net people,

I just got a copy of WUTIL 3.2, and used it to format both a 10M and a 20M
hard drive on a Rainbow (the 10M is a standard DEC drive, but the 20M isn't).
After formatting, initializing, and partitioning the disks (using 2 or 3
MS-DOS partitions), I get an non-fatal error message when starting MS-DOS
(version 2.11-1), even when loading from the floppy disk.  The error message
says something about "only 8 Megabytes of the hard disk are usable", but when
MS-DOS finishes loading, I seem to be able to use all of the partitions.

I've tried all kinds of things to fix this, including reformatting the disk,
reinitializing it, repartitioning it, using MS-DOS "FORMAT" and "FORMAT /S"
on each partition, copying the new boot loaders, and even setting each of the
partitions as the autoboot partition individually.  The problem persists on
the 20M drive, but seems to have gone away on the 10M drive after the second
or third time I formatted it.

Does anyone have an idea what's causing this?  I'm hesitant to load all the
software on the hard disk until I know what's going on.  Could it be a bad
hard disk controller?  Or should I just be using MS-DOS 3.10b instead? :-)
Thanks in advance.
			Roger Hammerquist
			roger@tc.fluke.COM
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Message-ID: <1991Jun3.194257.29526@tc.fluke.COM>
Path: arc1-ca.pugleaf.net!utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!swrinde!elroy.jpl.nasa.gov!lll-winken!aunro!alberta!ubc-cs!uw-beaver!fluke!roger

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Path: arc1-ca.pugleaf.net!utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!swrinde!elroy.jpl.nasa.gov!lll-winken!aunro!alberta!ubc-cs!uw-beaver!fluke!roger
From: roger@tc.fluke.COM (Roger Hammerquist)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.dec.micro
Subject: Hard disk problem on Rainbow
Keywords: HELP!  WUTIL 3.2  hard disk
Message-ID: <1991Jun3.194257.29526@tc.fluke.COM>
Date: 3 Jun 91 19:42:57 GMT
Organization: John Fluke Mfg. Co., Inc., Everett, WA
Lines: 23