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Re: Linux - Win95 compatability



Robert D. Hilliard wrote:
> 
>      From time to time I have seen messages on this list and elsewhere
> about Win95 overwriting Linux partitions.
> 
>      Is there an effective procedure to stop this from happening?
> 
> Bob
> 

This happened to me because (I believe) I created the DOS partition
above 1024 cylinders. DOS95 seemed to simply modulo the cylinder number
by 1024, thus writing all over the Linux partition. (This may be a well
known feature of DOS, although I didn't know it. I probably should have
taken the hint when DOS fdisk wouldn't correctly report on its own
partition, even though it seemed to be working.)

I solved the problem by setting the disk into LBA mode in the BIOS. As I
understand it Linux does not use the BIOS (although LILO does) but it
does honour the LBA addressing. No doubt people with a better
understanding of this will correct me if I am wrong.

I have another large disk which is not running in LBA mode. In this case
there is also a DOS partition, but below 1024 cylinders. This has been
stable for about a year.

Evan.
--
Evan Thomas
Department of Physiology
University of Melbourne
Parkville, 3052
ph: 9344-5849  fax: 9344-5818


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