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Solve : Dos harddrive failure? |
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Answer» I'm trying to boot an harddrive into dos 6.22, i format the harddrive after booting into dos 6.22 form a disk, i run format c:/s. after that if i reboot on the disk, a can acces the harddrive, and see the command.com, but i can't boot on the harddrive, i always receive the message "hard drive FAILURE" If you ran the format then C: is empty... He used the /s switch. If I recall, doesn't that transfer system files, and make the formatted disk bootable? ... or is supposed to? I wonder if there was some error message. That's right Willy....forgot about the /s switch... It should indeed be bootable. The drive may have gone South... DLoad the Free diagnostics from the HDD manuf. site...run the long test.Quote from: patio on February 03, 2011, 07:06:55 AM That's right Willy....forgot about the /s switch... What I was wondering, and have not taken time to look up.... way back my memory, isn't there something about DOS 6.22 and hd size limit? Was it 2GB? (and I'm assuming that the drive in question here is larger than that) That's what I was wondering about, when I asked about error messages. I just can't remember what happens with 'large' hard drives. Could using a 'large' hd be the poster's problem? Quote The drive may have gone South... That too. Well he didn't mention the size...i'll guess we have to wait... The 2G was a FAT limitation....not neccessarily confined to DOS...Quote from: patio on February 03, 2011, 08:42:19 AM Well he didn't mention the size...i'll guess we have to wait... Ah! That's it. Quote not neccessarily confined to DOS... But... DOS used FAT. Well... I don't mean to obfuscate the issue. I was reaching.. looking for possibilities. Let's see what he has to say, when he returns. I'd still like to know if there was any error message. Thanks Here's the message: Quote i always receive the message "hard drive failure" We:ll see...thats why i suggested HDD diagnostics.Quote from: patio on February 03, 2011, 09:04:12 AM Here's the message: Sorry... I was referring to : "i run format c:/s" ... I wondered if that command behaved normally, or if it showed some error. Would DOS 'lie', and report hard drive failure if it tried to boot from a hd, and only got part way through it? And I agree... it sure can't hurt, in the process of elimination, to do the hd diagnostics. More precision: Hi, what I'm trying to do is to "repair" and old industrial computer from siemens running on a PLC setup. This computer is a 386 with a phoenix 1.02 BIOS. I try to USE an 2G hard drive. the broken one was a 3G, larger than the configured BIOS setting TYPE 17 (40Mb), but it was working!! i'm pretty shure tha the 3g was running in dos6.22 because a "setver" command was in the config.sys hope it will help I'm running this program now to repair all the "bad" sectors on a freshly formatted 20GB hard drive. It's not a free program but so far, it's fixing every bad sector. Read the User testimonials. I also used it to repair industrial PLC's (A-B). FAT16 MAX volume size is 2GB. Your 3GB drive may have unallocated the last 1GB which is no problem.Quote from: Computer_Commando on February 03, 2011, 04:59:07 PM FAT16 max volume size is 2GB. specific Operating systems (DOS, win9x for example) limit FAT-16 to 2GB, because they use a 32K maximum cluster size; unsigned short (16-bit) gives us 65,536 clusters; with 32K clusters that gives us 2,147,483,648 bytes (2GB); with 64K sized clusters, it goes up to 4GB. 64K is the largest possible cluster size, and can be used by at the very least NT4 (don't know about other versions) For the purposes being described, though, this is all irrelevant. In fact, such limitations are wholly redundant since they successfully issued a format command. The DOS Format command isn't going to format a drive larger then capacity; and I don't think fdisk will allow you to create a partition larger then 2GB anyways. personally I've never had much luck with the /s switch on format. I always end up using sys C:... or perhaps it's force of habit. Quote from: gibson1965 on February 03, 2011, 01:47:52 PM the broken one was a 3G, larger than the configured BIOS setting TYPE 17 (40Mb), but it was working!! I think it does, gives us some context. So If I understand this correctly, you have the "new" 2GB installed using TYPE 17? I'd run a sys C: after booting from the floppy, just to be sure. Maybe "start over" by using fdisk and deleting all partitions and recreating them. (or, it, I should say). the new hard drive may simply not be compatible as a Type 17; you might be able to use type 47 (user) and put in your own disk geometry; but you'd probably be better off swapping through a few different types until you get something that works reliably. Quote from: WillyW on February 03, 2011, 09:24:04 AM I wondered if that command behaved normally, or if it showed some error.This- did the format complete successfully? after the format it will state "System transferred"; did this occur? Quote Would DOS 'lie', and report hard drive failure if it tried to boot from a hd, and only got part way through it?No. The error is being reported by the BIOS; a MACHINE of that era would often state hard disk failure simply because it couldn't boot from the drive. (DOS doesn't report serious hard disk errors at all; usually the best you can hope for is a hang) Quote from: BC_Programmer on February 03, 2011, 08:37:24 PM ... you might be able to use type 47 (user) and put in your own disk geometry; but you'd probably be better off swapping through a few different types until you get something that works reliably.That's what I was going to suggest. |
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