🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <630474633wnr@dagorn.demon.co.uk>
           david@dagorn.demon.co.uk "David McKone" writes:

<tale of Seagate hard drive trashing FAT>

Check the following:

1. BIOS settings are correct for the drive. Not >1024 cylinders.
2. Dblspace/drvspace chucked out the window
2.5. Chuck any Drive Rocket/disk manager software out the window
3. Run a decent virus checker (Dr Solly's)
4. Check Smartarse^H^H^H^Hdrive write-behind caching is disabled (/X)

Disconnect the 850, connect the 300 to the primary controller,
run setup, disable any LBA/Enhanced settings in BIOS, save settings,
boot from DOS floppy 1, press f3 twice to get to the dos prompt,
enter:

FDISK /MBR

Run Fdisk again and delete all partitions on the drive.

Then press reset and do a complete, clean installation of DOS.

Run the drive for a while on its own. If you still have problems
with the FAT being trashed, I suspect you have a hardware fault.

If the drive works OK, reconnect the 850 and see if the problem recurs.
If it does, are you using Ontrack or WD software to get the full 
capacity of the 850 drive, or are you using the BIOS and LBA?
What BIOS do you have?

The fact that Windows 95 seems OK (it does its own hard disc management, 
bypassing the BIOS's INT13h), seems to point in that direction.

-- 
Mike Tomlinson