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put 98SE boot HDD as slave in XP machine for file transfer ...


ananda6359

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Any ideas why? Something I don't know?

I just got a brand-new install of 98SE working perfectly, tweaked to (near) perfection, and slaved its (partitioned, four-month-new) master Western Digital 320GB HDD into a nearby XP machine in order to move 250GB+ (back) onto the 98SE HDD.

I moved part of the load, but since the XP machine was needed for awhile I mastered the 98SE boot HDD back into the 98SE machine over the 98SE slave HDD and now the master HDD won't boot. Western Digital's Data Lifeguard boot CD sees the HDD as blank (with a new label filled with carets that bears no resemblance to the actual internal label "WDC WD320 ... &c") and asks me if I want to set it up for my system. If I don't boot to CD, the machine just hangs after POST.

Can XP 'dispose' a HDD to fit to XP's way of thinking of the world? The HDD works fine in XP and all data is accessible. Did the XP boot process do something to the MBR on the 98SE HDD's primary, active partition?

I have (very recent - current, in fact) backups of my 98SE installation, so if needed I can reïnstall 98SE on this HDD to reset the MBR and then partition-copy an old installation into the partition to get 98SE running again with not (too) much hassle, but I'm not sure if that's the only problem I'm encountering. Why the whole HDD (and not just the MBR) unrecognizable by DOS, so that even the internal HDD label is inaccessible to the WD Data Lifeguard boot CD and even more accessible (in a manner of speaking) to the machine itself (XP reads the label fine - just did, in fact)?

Like I said, I haven't lost anything - even the 98SE installation that took me days to set up to my liking -; but I really don't wish (if possible) to DBAN, repartition, and reformat the HDD before I can revert to my backup 98SE installation. Somehow, I need to get 250GB+ to my 98SE machine from an XP machine. Somehow, it seems to me I've done this before without any problem.

Thanks ... and wish me luck.

P.S.: This issue first cropped up a few days ago, immediately after I installed a good many (but not the Internet-related, since this computer will never be online) of the updates listed on "The complete list of hotfixes & updates for Windows 98se" which unfortunately trashed my system. Two DBANs later, WD Data Lifeguard was able to recognize the original "WDC WD320 ..." internal HDD label, so I reïnstalled 98SE and the updates (which did not trash my system, because I did it more thoughtfully the second time 'round) and got to this point. Is this a sign of a bad HDD? It's fairly new but that doesn't necessarily mean anything; and I think my 98SE slave Western Digital HDD handles 98SE-to-XP-slaving-to-98SE just fine. Why the f***ing HDD label? That's what gets me.

p***ed (in general, not at anyone, or even anything),

me

[edits to undo special characters]

Edited by ananda6359
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Western Digital's Data Lifeguard boot CD sees the HDD as blank (with a new label filled with carets that bears no resemblance to the actual internal label "WDC WD320 ... &c") and asks me if I want to set it up for my system.

THAT is preoccupying.

Did you try with another good cable?

How does the BIOS sees the drive?

Since Win98 and NT based systems behave differently, the first one uniquely relying on info gathered from the BIOS, the latter by re-scanning buses with it's own drivers, I guess it is possible what you describe if the BIOS does not recognize it properly.

Do have a look at the drive with this program:

http://hddguru.com/content/en/software/

http://hddguru.com/content/en/software/2005.10.02-MHDD/

jaclaz

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Did you try with another good cable?

Not yet, but it only doesn't work on this cable after I've put it in the XP machine.

How does the BIOS sees the drive?

Not sure ... all mine says is 'primary hard disk installed' or somesuch.

Thanks ... this looks good. I'll keep it ready in case things have no other solution but a wipe and reformat.

Triple check your IDE cable at both mobo and HDD ends.

Hmm ... I reset all connections (again, actually - I did the same thing I don't know how many times over the past couple days after this happened a couple days ago) but no joy.

I did just find out that although Western Digital's Data Lifeguard CD doesn't see the correct drive label, it does recognize all the partitions on the HDD, with their labels - except for the last partition (which, furthermore, unlike the first three (that is, until past the 128GB/137GiB limit), is described as a FAT16 (instead of FAT32) partition - although it actually is a FAT32 drive).

This is exactly the problem (down to which drives and labels recognized) I got (although within 98SE - *sigh*) before applying the 48-bit LBA patch to my 98SE installation. Did XP undo the 48-bit LBA patch? If so, why would this keep the system from booting? Or, does WD's Data Lifeguard simply fall prey to the non-48-bit LBA limitations?

[ ... ]

Well : just checked in an MS-DOS boot CD, and only the partitions that fall entirely under the 128GB limit are visible. The two partitions on my slave and the 2GB/106GB on my master are available - but not the last two 106GB partitions on my master. This was not the case after DBANing and formatting two days ago. After a clean partition and format, MS-DOS (and 98SE safe mode) can see all six partitions correctly; only 98SE cannot due to the buggy 48-bit LBA handling. Now, after booting as a slave to XP, the HDD acts in MS-DOS as it used not to act in MS-DOS but in 98SE.

Now what the hell?

[ ... ]

Huh ... checking out http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk. I'll let you know ...

[ ... ]

Well, s***. MS-DOS handles every X: request on the master HDD (but not on the slave - works fine there) with "Invalid media type reading drive X". Yet the HDD works fine on XP and at least the partitions that fall under the 128GB limit can be seen by WD's Data Lifeguard.

[ ... ]

Okay ... got TestDisk running from my 98SE slave drive (which I had to slave to the XP system in order to get TestDisk on the 98SE slave; no problems there!), and it looks promising. TestDisk detects the proper size of my master HDD and reports a lot of errors about a bad partition table, &c. I think TestDisk claims to be able to fix this, so we'll se ...

Edited by ananda6359
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Oh my f***ing ...

It's fixed.

I ran TestDisk (from a MS-DOS boot CD) from my slave HDD and it reported lots of errors (as in misinformation - not physical errors) re: my master HDD. Specifically, it reported a "bad media descriptor" (sounds like what I want). I selected the master HDD (which it did recognize as the correct size) and chose the "Analyse" option, and then it ran through all the ~38,000 cylinders on the master HDD. It then reported (due to the same f***ing buggy 48-bit LBA-handling code) that the last two partitions (the ones partially or entirely located above 128GB on the master HDD) couldn't be recovered (in the partition table; but my problem thankfully wasn't the partition table).

After it analyzed the HDD, I quit TestDisk and rebooted into my MS-DOS boot CD - and it recognized all six partitions. I rebooted and let it try to load Windows, and it did - in fact it's running right now with no problems at all.

I think the problem is my HDD - because I don't have any other HDDs raped by XP in the same way.

But if the HDD is otherwise alright (which it seems in every way to be, running flawlessly in 98SE and XP so long as the OS boots), I'll keep it.

Apparently TestDisk automatically fixes the "bad media descriptor" in order to be able to analyze the HDD; and the media descriptor was my only problem.

Thank God. *heaves sigh of relief*

[edit: but I'm curious - how does a "media descriptor" become bad in the first place?]

[further edit: okay, tried it again - slaved HDD into XP machine, wouldn't then boot in 98SE machine or talk to MS-DOS, ran "Analyse" in TestDisk (from MS-DOS), restarted and 98SE boots fine: it looks like this is a genuine fix for the "bad media descriptor" f***-up; note that "Analyse" (in my experience) needs to be let entirely run lest an odd (read a wrong) HDD size be reported (i/s, putting the drive back into XP "fixes" it so that TestDisk can again recognize the HDD as its proper size and really fix it); and don't change anything - just "Analyse" the disk and {Return} through (if I remember) all the prompts]

Edited by ananda6359
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One "media descriptor" byte that I do know about is actually the default fill byte used in each sector to denote an empty sector. Atari 8bit machines use double goose eggs (truely empty), msdos floppies use Byte F7 IIRC, FAT 16 and FAT 32 hard drives use something else and no doubt NTFS hard drives use yet another byte pattern for the purpose. It's hardly cause to stop the world when they don't match what they are supposed to be, but what can be done about it from here?

It looks like you lucked onto a real sweet fix - I'd run with it...

I'm not sure my "media descriptor" is the same thing you've been talking about in the first place, but I'm sure I don't have a clue how 'it' could get ruined by a visit with XP.

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Just a guess on my part, but the only "media descriptor" that "should" or maybe "could" be changed on a physical sector, is byte 64 of FAT32 bootsector or byte 36 of FAT16 bootsector, i.e. the "BIOS HD" which is 80h (128 dec) for FIRST hard disk, 81h (129 dec) for second hard disk, and so on.

DOS and Win9x will NOT boot from a drive identified by anything but 80h, this, as the MS guys like to put it is "by design", hence the need to use grub4dos or other bootmanagers capable of changing this byte and or trick the BIOS into thinking that the drive whence you are booting from is First drive.

The byte usually called "media descriptor" is byte 21 of both type of sectors, and that is F8 for hard disks and F0 for floppy.

However, it is nearly impossible to determine WHAT actually caused the problem, a defective connection (read cable and/or connectir on either MB or HD still appears as a probable cause), but it could also be that part of the corruption (not related to first/second hard disk) was pre-existing amd would have been found by Testdisk if run before the disk switching.

jaclaz

Edited by jaclaz
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... it is nearly impossible to determine WHAT actually caused the problem, a defective connection (read cable and/or connectir on either MB or HD still appears as a probable cause), but it could also be that part of the corruption (not related to first/second hard disk) was pre-existing amd would have been found by Testdisk if run before the disk switching.

Okay ... guess I may never know, then: but thanks for all the help nevertheless.

ta,

me

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Mmm ... looks like the problem is solved.

The media descriptor got corrupted again without having had it (immediately before) in an XP machine and in such a way that the HDD reported at ~4GB instead of 320GB; and when I tried to boot into 98SE it announced a missing VMM32.VXD. I manually search \system\ and found it to indeed be nonexistent (as not before).

Put the HDD back into XP to get at an old, RAR-ed VMM32 and "reset" the media descriptor, and got to watch before my eyes the HDD in its death throes. File- and directory-names corrupted as I watched and became in accessible, so I crashed the machine and thought about it (then put it back in briefly a few moments ago and successfully rescued the few files I had updated since getting the 98SE machine to "work" again).

Apparently the "bad media descriptor" was the result of the overall deterioration of the HDD. The XP machine caught the errors and tried to compensate for them, and the 98SE couldn't understand the rewrite XP was forced to do in order to get the HDD working on the XP machine.

The HDD is still under warranty and in fact I already have an advance return order active on it. They're already shipping the replacement, and I have thirty days to get this one back. Give me eight hours for a 3BAN and off it goes (and good riddance)!

Since I copied (not cut) files from XP to 98SE until making sure everything was legit (and was allowed to recover the few updated/new files from the 98SE machine), not a thing is lost. It is odd that a four-month old HDD went bad so quickly ... I've never had problems with Western Digital before and trust this is an isolated incident ...

Again, I thank God ... this could have been so very much worse. Here's to HDDs that don't crash! *clinks mug*

ta (and relieved to know why,

me

[oh god ... edit for embarrassing misspelling]

Edited by ananda6359
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Not that there was much question about this ... but my new HDD arrived today and is experiencing none of the aforementioned problems. Now to see if it continues to run four months from now ...

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