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Woes installing 98SE on new 80g WD HD


DeadDude

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The HPA re-created by motherboard is "queer" :w00t: , anyway, and would be worth IMHO further investigations. :angel

Not so queer. I have a motherboard that does that.

It shouldn't be an issue unless the available space becomes smaller than the image being loaded.

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The HPA re-created by motherboard is "queer" :w00t: , anyway, and would be worth IMHO further investigations. :angel

Not so queer. I have a motherboard that does that.

It shouldn't be an issue unless the available space becomes smaller than the image being loaded.

I would gladly :) "downgrade" the QUECON queerness condition :ph34r: from 2 to 3 or even 4, provided you:

  1. tell us which motherboard it is
  2. what are the actual contents of the HPA the motherboard creates (OP reported a FAT12 filesystem - maybe something connected to an emnergency-emergency boot to upgrade or reset the BIOS?)
  3. you could provide some more info/insight on the matter (I simply cannot believe :w00t: that you actually saw this happening and avoided to investigate the behaviour right down to the single byte or bit ;))

:hello:

jaclaz

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The HPA re-created by motherboard is "queer" :w00t: , anyway, and would be worth IMHO further investigations. :angel

Not so queer. I have a motherboard that does that.

It shouldn't be an issue unless the available space becomes smaller than the image being loaded.

I would gladly :) "downgrade" the QUECON queerness condition :ph34r: from 2 to 3 or even 4, provided you:

  1. tell us which motherboard it is
  2. what are the actual contents of the HPA the motherboard creates (OP reported a FAT12 filesystem - maybe something connected to an emnergency-emergency boot to upgrade or reset the BIOS?)
  3. you could provide some more info/insight on the matter (I simply cannot believe :w00t: that you actually saw this happening and avoided to investigate the behaviour right down to the single byte or bit ;))

:hello:

jaclaz

It was several years ago so I don't remember the details of the original discovery.

I ran some tests and discovered that the Gigabyte MA78GM Motherboard reserves an 0x841 Sector HPA on all Motherboard connected Hard Drives.

It contains a BIOS Image in the first Megabyte and a small amount of data in the remaining 32.5K

I removed the HPAs but the Motherboard did not restore them. I suspect that it only puts in the HPAs if the Drive is blank or unpartitioned as the OP has been instructed to do.

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It was several years ago so I don't remember the details of the original discovery.

I ran some tests and discovered that the Gigabyte MA78GM Motherboard reserves an 0x841 Sector HPA on all Motherboard connected Hard Drives.

It contains a BIOS Image in the first Megabyte and a small amount of data in the remaining 32.5K

I removed the HPAs but the Motherboard did not restore them. I suspect that it only puts in the HPAs if the Drive is blank or unpartitioned as the OP has been instructed to do.

You report -as always - makes a lot of sense :thumbup , the fact that it is not common doesn't mean that it is not a good idea, basically when the disk (new from factory and completely 00'ed and ONLY if this latter condition is met) is connected the first time to the motherboard, it makes a backup of the BIOS - just in case.

What the OP reported remains "queer" as :

well, I removed the HPA anyways and started fresh. Interestingly, the HPA came back after a few power cycles... and I noticed the BIOS splash screen starting listing "Booting from XPRESS blah blah"

I did some digging, and found the motherboard itself creates an HPA exactly as I had seen on this drive previously.

Most probably the HPA was re-instated on FIRST connection once 00'ed and it's presence wasn't noticed until "a few power cycles later".

Or, since there are anyway some unused sectors at the end of *any* disk if the cylinder boundary is respected during partitioning, the HPA reservation/install only happens after the disk has been partitioned, but then again that should happen at first power cycle after the partitioning is effective. :unsure:

I find quite hard to believe that the HPA is checked - and if missing recreated - "every third reboot" (or on fridays with ful moon in months without an R ;)).

DeadDude reference to "Booting from XPRESS" made me land nicely here:

http://www.gigabyte.com/webpage/21/Xpress-Recovery2.html

(newer version)

and here:

http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1196073

http://web.archive.org/web/20060930120542/http://www.gigabyte.com.tw/Support/Motherboard/TechGuide_List.aspx?NewTechID=84

So the feature is called XPRESS BIOS RESCUE, with these new keywords something can be found:

http://web.archive.org/web/20070202044651/http://www.gigabyte.com.tw/FileList/NewTech/2006_motherboard_newtech/article_04_bios_explained.htm

http://www.gigabyte.com/webpage/8/article_04_bios_explained.htm

and the issue is cleared.

article_04_bios_explained_003.jpg

The "indestructible" may be a bit optimistic, though ;).

QUECON 4

everything is cool :)

jaclaz

Edited by jaclaz
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sounds like the fdisk bug..... I think windows ME bootdisk fixed it

The math doesn't sound exactly right:

http://www.allensmith.net/Storage/HDDlimit/98Fdisk.htm

156,301,488x512=80,026,361,856

80,026,361,856-68,719,476,736=11,306,885,120

11,306,885,120/1,024=11,041,880

11,041,880/1,024=10,783.0859375

Maybe the OP lied :w00t::ph34r: (or maybe was not ereally accurate in his report)

FDisk and all other partition manager software pre-2001 report is as a 10gig.

In such a situation FDISK should have shown 10.783 Mbytes in size :unsure: and "all" the others" *somethinge else*.

But it could be :thumbup . (I still wonder WHICH are the "all the others" ;)), but the bug is in FDISK only, and should not have affected the disk once partitioned in Win2K Setup, maybe it was a "combination" of things.

jaclaz

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On my iPod, sorry for lack of quotes and clarity...

I do not know if fdisk listed gig or Meg, very possible I misread and assumed it was gig.

Reading the suggestion of percentage instead of absolute values sound *very* familiar... Like I forgot that bit from not doing this for such a long time.

The HPA may have been immediately reinstated upon first boot and I didn't notice until later.... The first boot didn't show any XPRESS message, but a later boot up (after I partitioned?) had the message.

Weird thing tho, as I have since checked the other machines (remember, these machines came from the same batch- all parts sans this 80, were purchased together) do NOT have the HPA. So it sounds like something I did during initial setup all those years ago 'worked around' it.

I will post again and answer more questions, just need to 'reply' so I can scroll back and re-readanother post I want to respond to. This site is real hard to use on tiny handheld...!

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"all the others" in reference to drive being reported as 10.blah refers to some OLD software I had tried.

Old boot CD from 95OSR2.1

Win98 *.*.2222 CD (I really need to just LOOK at it already and give you the actual label #'s- it isn't listed in any listing I can find on W98SE revision charts I can find)

floppy boot disk images from bootcd.something that were put onto CD by me.

Ancient redhat installer CD (4.?2. Not in front of me right now)

only when those things appeared faulty did I try the W2k cd again.

When the 80 got here, I first installed W2k (to test his software ona "modern" OS)

to remove W2k, I booted 98SE cd and removed the partitions from the installer.

If I remember correctly, I had to reboot afterwards, before files were copied.

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