Clean up a messy startup situation

Hi BB,

This is a physical problem, the connector ends came loose, are you saying that "these new systems" are more fragile - in the sense of cheaper material?

Regards - Charles

 

Yes, I'm almost 100% positive that it's physical. I have the drive totally out of the case now and have gotten a better look and the plug is messed up. I have another cable and I'll know if/when I get the old out and the new installed.

 

BB, I don't see any discrepancy, the numbers across add up to what they should be. For 80gig drives 74 and fraction is right.

Look at my attachment - Disk 1 is an 80gig drive and actually is 74.53 gigs, again about right. What this is about is what the manufactures state as a definition of how big a gigabyte is in decimal terms and what a gigabyte is in binary terms.

I could be missing something about those numbers of course

Regards - Charles

 

You mean to tell me that the above reading from the image file ( and I am looking at a printout of it ) show no discrepency ?

51.33 is WAY under for Drv1 which is an 80 gig drive and 97.65 is WAY over for Drv2 which is also an 80gb drive.

And I think that 148gb out of a possible 160gb is too far off.

And Drv1 ( in the image ) only showing 2 partitions where there is supposedly 3 ?

Or am I thinking 100% wrong ?

Oh BTW. I may be learning something here too.

BillyBob

 

Hi BB,

You're looking at the labels Bob assigned to the drives - look at the bottom panel:

Disk 0 where he labeled the partitions DRV_1/DRV_2.

Disk 1 He kept the labeling consistent - all DRV_2.

There is a formula for this - differences between what drive sizes are marketed as and the reality. I have it somewhere, I'll try to dig it out.

Ran across this a while ago - apropos of this:

A suit against hardware MFG's for overstating HD sizes: http://news.zdnet.com/2100-9584_22-5078961.html

Regards - Charles

 

charlesvar
It seems we maybe are looking at different things. Or looking at things in different ways.

I did look at the bottom panel and I still see it as showing 2 partitions on Drv1 and 4 partitions on Drv2. And that disagress with the above quote by Bob.

Ok I just checked and my partitions on my 80gb HD and they added up to 74.64 so I will go along with that.

Again I say 51.33 and 97.69 are way out of line for two 80gb drives. Even if the total of 149.02 does closely agrees with 74.64 x 2.

BillyBob

 

148 formatted on a 160 gig drive is probably right. drives are usually rated as 'unformatted capacity'. there is overhead in formatting so u'll never see a 160g actually measure out to 160

i also believe that many drives are based on 1000 instead of the 1024 that actually 'is' more or less.

 

Whew! Back online with the original from the 'Get Go' setup. It was the cable connector that got messed up. After tearing the connector into a number of pieces getting it out it did seem kind of cheaply built. It was a replacement round cable for the original mobo ribbon cable. I will attach a new screen capture of the current setup. BillyBob, the third vol. on disk 1 somehow got renamed in the changing around and I just straightened the naming out. Everyone might like to take a break about now.

 

Yes, that's it.

The formula:
/1.024 (bytes to kilobytes)
/1.024 (kilobytes to megabytes)
/1.024 (megabytes to gigbytes)

.9313 X stated size in gigbytes = actual size.
80GB X .9313 = 74.504

BB,

I did look at the bottom panel and I still see it as showing 2 partitions on Drv1 and 4 partitions on Drv2. And that disagress with the above quote by Bob.
Disk 0: Partition 1 DRV_1VOL1(C) Partition 2 DRV_1VOL2(D) Partition 3 DRV2_1VOL1(E)

Disk 1: Partition 1 DRV_2VOL1(F) Partition 2 DRV_2VOL2(G) Partition 3 DRV2_1VOL1(H)

3 partitions per volume and roughly equal in size and adds up to the stated total (more or less).

What did happen is that the partitions names were jiggered around, but the sizes were right.


Bob - great news.

When you get interested again, there is a way to accomplish what you set out to do w/o touching the hardware.

Regards - Charles

 

bobmc32

That is ABSOLUTELY GREAT news.

Glad to read that all seems to be back in order.

I very much like the the new image. 74.52 and 3 partitions on each drive reads MUCH better.

My Wife is asking me to take her shopping for new Curtains. Will check back in later.

Again. Great news.

BillyBob

 

Charles - Well, that makes me smile! I'll reopen later after everyone's had a break and I really thank you for the "so far" time you have spent on this.

 

Curtains gotta wait. Phone rang anyway LOL

charlesvar

It sure does look like you and I see things differently.

I look at the original image I see;

DRV1-VOL1 25.15
DRV1-VOL2 26.18
These total 51.33 which is not correct for an 80gb drv.
DRV2-VOL1 23.26
DRV2-VOL1 24.83
DRV2-VOL1 24.85
DRV2-VOL2 24.81
These total 97.65 which is also not correct for an 80gb drv.

The new image shows
DRV1-VOL1 25.15
DRV1-VOL2 26.18
DRV1-VOL3 23.16
This now adds up to 74.49gb which seems to be OK for an 80gb drv.
DRV2-VOL1 24.83
DRV2-VOL1 24.85
DRV2-VOL2 24.81
This also now adds up to 74.49gb which also seems to be OK for an 80gb drv.
This now looks a heck of a lot closer to being correct.

The new image also now shows 3 partitions on each HD the way it should.

In other words I believe the original image showed the total to be correct but it was divided wrong. The new image appears to have it divided correctly.

BillyBob

 

Charles - Maybe I'm "recovered" enuf to attempt some further steps.
Is your reference to "without hardware changes" in reference to something like this? http://www.anandtech.com/guides/viewfaq.aspx?i=109
I haven't looked at it carefully but I have gone so far as to get the .ini file in notepad and at this point I "think" I could do that, but not sure. My boot.ini looks like this now:
[boot loader]
timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(1)WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(1)WINDOWS= "Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition" /noexecute=optin /fastdetect
C: = "Microsoft Windows "
At this point it is just a question and and a maybe.

 

Hi Bob,

You can do it by editing the boot.ini, but I would prefer to have the RC do it, but that's up to you.

Boot into the RC > boot into XP on F > use the bootcfg /REBUILD and choose XP as the only OS. That'll re-create the boot.ini minus the dual boot menu. At that point, you can get rid of 98's Windows files -later - and use C as a data partition.

This is also backtrackable: re-do the RC and add back 98.

There should be a backup boot.ini file as well in F:\Windows\pss boot.ini.backup. Just make sure it matches the "live" one.

Regards - Charles

 

Ahh Charles, the computer is a living thing and I have recently made our discussion Moot. Moot in that I created a situation where I could not boot to my desktop/O/S about two days ago. I now have "kind of" solved my problem because I buggered my system and had to reinstall. (Reinstalled XP to my Western Digital 80GB HDD and unplugged the other 80GB drive.) Now in process of reinstalling all and am back in pretty good shape but miss some of my tweaks. IOW I'm now single boot now and w/o the previous problem. I thank you for all of your time and thoughts toward solving my previous problem. Thanks again for all your help. I'll be back, I'm sure.

 

Bob, thanks for letting me know - I was wondering what you were going to do.

Regards - Charles