FIPS.FAQ
上传用户:jnzhq888
上传日期:2007-01-18
资源大小:51694k
文件大小:14k
- FIPS Frequently Asked Questions
- -------------------------------
- Here are some questions that people asked me by email. This file may
- help you with some common problems. Please read it carefully before sending
- mail. If you want to know what FIPS is all about, read the file README.1ST.
- There are answers to the following questions:
- Q01. Since you can split partitions with FIPS, it should also be possible
- to merge partitions, right?
- Q02. Can I reverse the changes that FIPS made to my harddisk?
- Q03. What if I did not keep the root and boot sector? Can I still undo the
- partition split?
- Q04. I heard that the cluster size depends on the partition size and that
- space usage is better with a small cluster size. Can I use FIPS to
- decrease the cluster size of my hard disk?
- Q05. I want to split a large partition into three or four smaller ones.
- Can I use FIPS multiple times?
- Q06. FIPS creates a second primary DOS partition by default. Is this allowed?
- Q07. What does the message "Info: Partition table inconsistency" mean?
- Q08. FIPS displays an error message and refuses to work. What should I do?
- Q09. FIPS does not recognize my SCSI disk.
- Q10. FIPS finds a partition with partition type 56h.
- Q11. FIPS seems to work fine, and DOS sees the new partition, but Linux
- fdisk sees only one partition.
- Q12. Does FIPS work with Windows 95?
- ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
- Q01. Since you can split partitions with FIPS, it should also be possible
- to merge partitions, right?
- A01.a
- -----
- NOT IN GENERAL. I don't want to go into technical details, just so much:
- Every DOS formatted partition has a file allocation table (FAT) that holds
- entries for every cluster of the partition. Usually one FAT is not large
- enough to hold the information for both partitions, so that partitions can
- not be easily joined. It is feasible, but I'm probably not going to incor-
- porate this into FIPS.
- So far I have heard of two software packages that claim to expand partitions.
- One is a free program called "Partition Resizer" (look for a file called
- presz???.zip on you favorite BBS or FTP server), the other is a commercial
- product called PartitionMagic by Powerquest. I did not try these yet.
- A01.b
- -----
- YES, if you split the partitions with FIPS before. As you may expect,
- the problem with the FAT does not exist in that case, since it was origi-
- nally formatted large enough. In fact the only thing required is resto-
- ring the original root and boot sector (it does not matter how the data
- on the partition changed in the meantime). This can be done with the
- program 'restorrb' which comes with FIPS. Please consider the following:
- - You must have the original image of the root and boot sector. For this
- you _must_ save them to a floppy disk when FIPS offers that.
- - You must not format the first partition in the meantime (because then
- a new FAT is generated which is probably too small).
- - The data on the second partition (the one that was generated by FIPS)
- is lost, of course. The data on the first partition is preserved.
- ---------
- Q02. Can I reverse the changes that FIPS made to my harddisk?
- A02.
- ----
- Yes, see answer A01.b. Make sure that you keep the original root and boot
- sectors that you can save to floppy disk with FIPS.
- ---------
- Q03. What if I did not keep the root and boot sector? Can I still undo the
- partition split?
- A03.
- ----
- Difficult. For the moment, your only option is to read the file TECHINFO.TXT
- to learn about the hard disk structures, recalculate the old partition
- and format info by hand and use a disk editor the change them. You must
- roughly proceed as follows (I will call the partition that was split off
- of the original partition the 'second' partition, the remaining part of
- the original partition the 'first' one):
- 1. Make sure there is no important data left on the second partition,
- since it will be deleted. Make copies of all root and boot sectors
- (on floppy disk!) in case you make a mistake. Also make sure that
- you have a bootable DOS floppy with the disk editor on it. Backup
- your data!
- 2. Choose 'edit physical drive' and 'edit partition table' in the disk
- editor menu (assuming that your disk editor supports this).
- 3. Examine the table to make sure which two partitions you want to merge.
- 4. Take end head, cylinder, sector from the second partition and enter the
- values in the corresponding fields of the first partition.
- 5. Add the number of sectors of the first partition to the number of sectors
- of the second and enter the new value in the number of sectors field
- of the first partition.
- 6. Delete the entry for the second partition completely (overwrite with
- zeroes).
- 7. Look for the boot sector of the first partition and enter the new no.
- of sectors in the no. of sectors field in the boot sector.
- Please make sure you know what you are doing. I can't take any responsibi-
- lity if you mess up your hard disk. Read the TECHINFO.TXT file carefully.
- ---------
- Q04. I heard that the cluster size depends on the partition size and that
- space usage is better with a small cluster size. Can I use FIPS to
- decrease the cluster size of my hard disk?
- A04.
- ----
- In the partition that you split off of the original partition, the cluster
- size is automatically adapted to the new size when you format it. In the
- original partition, you can not change the cluster size without reformat-
- ting and thereby deleting all data.
- If your new partition is big enough, you might copy the data to the new
- partition and format the old one, but be aware of two things:
- 1. You will not be able to reverse the partition split afterwards (see A1.a).
- 2. Newer format programs check to see if the partition has already been
- formatted and in this case will preserve the format (to make data re-
- covery easier in case the formatting was a mistake). You might have
- to trick the format program into thinking that the partition is new.
- Possibly the /u switch will do this (I have no possibility to check
- this, please let me know if it works), but if not, you might have to use
- a disk editor and overwrite the boot sector of the partition with zeroes
- to invalidate it.
- Note: I received a report that even overwriting the boot sector was not
- enough. I can only imagine that there was still information in the
- BIOS tables about the old format - I suggest to reboot after overwriting
- the boot sector to clear all tables. Sometimes the DOS tools are just
- too intelligent :-(
- If you experience problems here, drop me a line.
- The usual cluster size of a partition is roughly as follows:
- 0 - 32MB 512 Bytes
- 32 - 64MB 1024 Bytes
- 64 - 128MB 2048 Bytes
- 128 - 256MB 4096 Bytes
- 256 - 512MB 8192 Bytes
- 512 -1024MB 16384 Bytes
- ---------
- Q05. I want to split a large partition into three or four smaller ones.
- Can I use FIPS multiple times?
- A05.
- ----
- Yes. You must format the newly created partitions between successive uses
- of FIPS. Regarding the cluster size, consider the following example:
- - Suppose you want to split a 1GB hard disk into four partitions of
- 256K each.
- - The original partition is formatted with a cluster size of 16KB.
- - The first split is into 256KB / 768KB. The cluster size of the first
- partition remains 16KB, although 4KB would be enough. It can only be
- changed by reformatting, see A04.
- - The new partition of 768KB is formatted, still with a cluster size of 16KB.
- - The second split is made into 256KB / 256KB / 512KB.
- - The third partition is formatted with a cluster size of 8KB.
- - The third split is made into 256KB / 256KB / 256KB / 256KB.
- - The fourth partition is formatted with a cluster size of 4KB.
- - So now you have the cluster sizes 16K - 16K - 8K - 4K.
- - Since the second and third partition are still empty, it is possible
- to reformat them to a cluster size of 4K. See A04. for details on
- reformatting.
- ---------
- Q06. FIPS creates a second primary DOS partition by default. Is this allowed?
- A06.
- ----
- See the section 'What FIPS does' in FIPS.DOC for a discussion of this
- issue.
- ---------
- Q07. What does the message "Info: Partition table inconsistency" mean?
- A07.
- ----
- The partition table in the master boot record (root sector) consists of
- four entries with several fields each. The strange thing about this table
- is that some of the fields are redundant. Look here:
- | | Start | | End | Start |Number of|
- Part.|bootable|Head Cyl. Sector|System|Head Cyl. Sector| Sector |Sectors | MB
- -----+--------+----------------+------+----------------+--------+---------+----
- 1 | yes | 0 148 1| 83h| 15 295 63| 149184| 149184| 72
- 2 | no | 1 0 1| 06h| 15 139 63| 63| 141057| 68
- 3 | no | 0 140 1| 06h| 15 147 63| 141120| 8064| 3
- 4 | no | 0 0 0| 00h| 0 0 0| 0| 0| 0
- The start and end (head/cylinder/sector) values can be calculated from the
- start sector and number of sectors (after inquiring the BIOS about the number
- of heads and number of sectors per track), and in fact that's exactly what
- DOS does. These field are completely unused by DOS (and every other OS that
- I know of), so they could as well be set to all zeroes. It does however not
- hurt to keep them in a consistent state.
- When fdisk creates a partition table entry, it should enter the correct
- values in these fields. Now how can there be an inconsistency? There are
- at least two possibilities:
- 1. Some fdisk programs seem to write incorrect values, especially end
- cylinders that are off by one or two.
- 2. You have an EIDE drive that uses address translation. Modern hard disks
- usually have more than 1024 cylinders, but DOS does not allow for cylinder
- numbers greater than 1024. This caused the hard disk controller manufacturers
- to implement a trick: they decrease the number of cylinders and increase
- the number of heads that DOS is told when asking for the drive geometry.
- So DOS thinks it has a drive with e.g. 63 sectors, 32 heads and 1000
- cylinders, whereas the correct values are 63 sectors, 16 heads, 2000
- cylinders. Now if DOS asks for the first sector on cylinder 500, it
- really gets the first sector on cylinder 1000. This trick is called
- address translation.
- Some newer EIDE drives allow the address translation to be switched
- on and off in the BIOS. In some cases this is changed after the disk
- is formatted. This means that the drive geometry that DOS gets when
- querying the disk controller differs from the geometry that the drive
- was formatted with and which is reflected in the partition table. This
- is no problem for DOS, but it was a problem for FIPS until release 1.4.
- In the current release, if FIPS detects this kind of problem, it will
- adapt the partition table to the changed disk geometry.
- The bottomline is that you need not worry about this message, it is
- perfectly normal.
- ---------
- Q08. FIPS displays an error message and refuses to work. What should I do?
- A08.
- ----
- Although this is already addressed in FIPS.DOC, I can not emphasize it
- enough: If you send me email, please include the _DEBUG SCRIPT_ that you can
- produce with the -d switch. If you don't, I will have to ask you for it,
- and it will take longer to solve your problem.
- ---------
- Q09. FIPS does not recognize my SCSI disk.
- A09.
- ----
- There exist older SCSI adapters (an Adaptec 1524 was reported to have that
- 'feature') that need a device driver that is loaded from the config.sys
- before the disk can be accessed (i.e. the system must be booted from a
- second hard disk or floppy). This device driver does not provide a 'BIOS
- level' interface but a 'DOS level' interface to the hard disk (for the
- technicians: it hooks into the DOS interrupt 21h instead of the BIOS inter-
- rupt 13h). This means that the partition table can only be accessed via a
- special fdisk program that knows about the adapters' internals. FIPS will
- not work on these drives (and in fact even DOS' fdisk won't either).
- Possibly there exists a newer driver for that adapter that will provide a
- BIOS level interface - ask the manufacturer.
- ---------
- Q10. FIPS only finds a partition with partition type 56h, no DOS partition.
- A10.
- ----
- You have OnTrack Disk Manager installed. Read the relevant section in
- SPECIAL.DOC.
- ---------
- Q11. FIPS seems to work fine, and DOS sees the new partition, but Linux
- fdisk sees only one partition.
- A11.
- ----
- Somehow DOS loads a different partition table than the one in the master
- boot record.
- There are two possible causes:
- 1. You use a device driver like OnTrack Disk Manager. See the file
- SPECIAL.DOC
- 2. You have a virus in the master boot record. This does not happen often,
- but it is quite possible. Some viruses install themselves in the MBR and
- copy the original MBR to some other place. When DOS tries to access the
- partition table, the virus intercepts the BIOS call and returns the backup
- copy, in order to hide from possible detection. Check this with a virus
- scanner after booting from a clean DOS boot disk. You can remove a virus
- from the MBR by using DOS fdisk with the /mbr option, but be aware that
- in this case the 'backup' partition table is not restored. Thus the boot
- sector will contain the new info as changed by FIPS, but the partition table
- will contain the original (single partition) setup. This inconsistency
- must be corrected (e.g. with a disk editor).
- ---------
- Q12. Does FIPS work with Windows 95?
- A12.
- ----
- Yes. The file system of Windows 95 is the same as that of DOS. The only
- difference are the long file names, but FIPS works on a level below the
- directory level, so this is not a problem. Several people reported that
- FIPS worked flawlessly on a Win 95 partition.