SCOUG-HELP Mailing List Archives

Date:	Fri, 21 Nov 2003 23:44:10 PST8
From:	waynec@linkline.com
Reply-To:	scoug-help@scoug.com
To:	"Scoug Help Group OS/2" <scoug-help@scoug.com >
Subject:	SCOUG-Help: Wierd FDISK/PQmagic problem

Content Type: text/plain

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I have a puzzle. I am trying to re-establish my boot manager on a mixed
ide/scsi system after some physical changes. I can boot WinXP (ide), but
can't put Warp (scsi) in boot manager. It used to work, I just can't
remember exactly how I had set it up, and the utilities FDISK and PQmagic
show strange results.

PQmagic run from diskettes doesn't show my two scsi hard drives. Before the
changes it used to show one of them, now it doesn't show either one; it only
shows the ide drive, as disk 1.

Although I can see all three drives with FDISK, and FDISK does see all the
partitions correctly (Warp booted from diskettes), it shows the first scsi
drive as disk 1, rather than the ide drive (which it shows as disk 3).

Neither of those utilities will allow me to properly configure the boot
manager partition. I've looked at partition codes and they all seem OK.

More detail follows:

You may recall my trials & tribulations some time back (last May) installing
my new computer system with an ide 40gb hard drive and 2 scsi u160 drives.
I finally got it to the point where I could boot WinXP from the ide drive or
Warp fp15 from a u160 scsi drive; unfortunately I forgot exactly how I got
boot manager set up.

At the time I was not using the second of the two u160 scsi drives, even
though I had an empty hpfs partition formatted on it. I noted, however, that
whenever I booted my PQmagic diskettes, only the ide drive and the first
scsi drive were shown... unlike FDISK, which showed all 3 drives. Something
else I didn't understand is that FDISK showed the scsi drives first (lowest
physical scsi address drive as disk 1), while PQmagic showed the ide disk as
disk 1. I wondered at the time whether the drive addressing I used had
something to do with that, because I had the first drive jumpered at address
4 and the second at address 7, with the adapter itself as address 6; that
meant that each drive fell into a separate 8-device string on the scsi
adapter. Aside from those anomalies, all was working fine, so I ignored
them.

***************************************************************************

As an aside: a few weeks ago I screwed up and managed to inadvertently wipe
out the Warp partition. To recover, I copied an identical Warp partition
from a second computer by:

1. copying the working Warp partition to a scsi-2 drive,
2. temporarily installing a scsi-2 adapter and the scsi-2 drive on my new
computer,
3. copying Warp to my u160 drive in the same position as the partition I
trashed.

That worked fine and I got Warp working again. I mention this only because I
noted at the time that I had the u160 controller connected to a bottom PCI
slot on the motherboard, so when I inserted the scsi-2 controller in a
higher PCI slot, it's drive showed up ahead of the u160 drives when using
FDISK... wasn't a problem using DriveCopy CD boot, but could be in future if
I needed to boot from a u160 hard drive.

***************************************************************************

Recently I acquired a digital camera and quickly ran out of room to store
photos on the WinXP partition, so I decided to format the second (8gb) scsi
drive as one big fat32 partition for shared photo storage, something I had
intended to do anyway. I added fat32 capability to Warp so as to be able to
access the photos. It worked, except that I kept losing access to the fat32
partition after several minutes of storing/displaying photos with WinXP (had
to reboot to bring it back). So I decided to:

1. reseat the drive cables, and while in the machine,
2. change the physical addresses of the two scsi drives on the u160 adapter
to 2 and 4, respectively, to put them on the same 8-drive string to see if
that might allow the second drive to show up when I used PQmagic.
3. move the u160 adapter to a higher physical PCI slot on the motherboard,
4. move my modem to a lower PCI slot.

Rebooted WinXP, and it worked fine: I could see all the scsi drive
partitions and the fat32 partition stayed accessible.

But, the boot manager configuration now only shows the WinXP partition, I
cannot boot Warp. I expected that might happen since I changed the physical
PCI address of the scsi adapter by moving it, and the drive addresses by
re-jumpering them. The question is how to fix boot manager.

Booting Warp from diskettes and using FDISK: the boot manager partition is
not recognized as a boot manager (even though it works to boot WinXP),
probably because the boot drive is the ide drive, which FDISK shows as disk
3 (boot manager must be on disk 1, I think). If I disconnect the scsi
drives, I can reboot Warp from diskettes and delete/recreate the boot
manager partition (since ide drive now is disk 1) and add WinXP to it; but
of course there's no way to add the scsi Warp partition to the boot manager
with FDISK since the scsi drives aren't connected; once they are connected,
FDISK no longer recognizes the boot manager partition it previously put on
the ide drive (because that drive is now disk 3, not disk 1).

Booting PQmagic (I have versions 3, 5, and 7) from diskettes now only shows
the ide drive (although all 3 drives are connected and working with WinXP),
so I can't use PQmagic to add the scsi Warp partition to the IBM boot
manager.

I could try altering the bios to boot from scsi, then using FDISK to put
boot manager on the first scsi drive, but I have a feeling I already tried
that and it didn't let me create boot manager... I'll try it again to be
certain; I may have to disconnect the ide drive in order to create a boot
partition on scsi, although I have no idea if or why.

Anybody have any ideas for me???? What is the FDISK meaning of "active",
should the boot manager partition be set active or is it active by
definition?

Wayne

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