🚀 go-pugleaf

"Rod Speed" <rod_speed@yahoo.com> wrote:
>Svend Olaf Mikkelsen <svolaf@inet.uni2.dk> wrote in
>message news:39787361.3040784@news.inet.tele.dk...
>> Rod Speed <rod_speed@yahoo.com> wrote
>>> Richard RUDEK <x@invalid.zeta.org.au> wrote
>
>>>> I'd say, you probably ran into a side effect of
>>>> using the "Auto" detect feature(s) of your BIOS.
>
>>> I doubt it.
>
>>>> If the partition table gets corrupted, it can cause the BIOS to
>>>> decide to use a different type drive translation, other than LBA.
>
>>> The bios AUTO setting doesnt use the partition
>>> table. It just asks the drive about its parameters,
>>> and the drive doesnt use the partition table either.
>
>> This is definitely wrong.
>
>We'll see.
>
>> An Award BIOS with MODE set to AUTO will attempt
>> to determine the translation from the partition table.
>
>What evidence do you have for that assertion ?


Oh shit, here we go. 

Rod, I could ask you the same question. What evidence do you have that the
BIOS Auto setting *doesn't* use partition table data in the determination of
the correct translation to be used...

Quit simply, I noticed this behaviour a while back, and experimented. After
many hours, over a few days tinkering, I came to the conclusion that the
BIOS Hard disk "Auto" setting was indeed influenced by some/one of the
partition table entries. I honestly can't remember which brand BIOS it was,
but I'm prety sure it was a Pentium based system, thus most likely an AWARD.


I'm much too busy ATM, to play around with some test beds I have here, But
it is/was definately there. Try for your self...

As to wether this played a significant role in the "errors", I cannot
definately say, but I have had a few weird translation problems which
produced "bad clusters" when formatted - in the one case that I can
remember, the errors curiously occured after the ~508MB boundary, and was
continous from there on, so I wiped the partition table and started again. 

In fact Rod, you've suggested a number of times for people to use a Zeroing
utility of overcome some hard disk weirdities.

[snip]
  __   __  ________________________________________________________
 //)) //))| Richard RUDEK. MicroDek. Chatswood, Sydney. Australia. |
//\\ //\\ |http://microdek.homepage.com/                           |
          |________________________________________________________|