Large hard disk drives differ under DOS and Win95




Hi. Me again -- as you've been so helpful, thought I'd return the favour(s). (BTW -- any joy re Dual Boot mode on newer HDD's?

[ Answer: Yes. As we reported in our September issue, the Dual Boot mode seems to be restricted to Seagate drives]

Anyway, I heard this on a tape that comes with PC Support Advisor. A Win95 PC with dual boot to DOS 6 featured was working fine, until one day garbage resulted from booting DOS 6. Booting Win95 -- all OK.
Reason: At the time of the problems, data on HDD had reached the magic 528 meg limit on a motherboard without LBA mode.
Win95 apparently has the software ability to see beyond 528 meg (even without physical LBA on the motherboard) whereas DOS 6 isn't so smart and needs, as you'd be aware, the special overlay software in the HDD's MBR (Master Boot Record).
Hope this may be of use to you in helping others.
Keep up with the, frankly, bloody good work.
- Simon Trangmar


Thanks Simon. I think it's important that other readers, especially those with children and computers in the same address space, should have the opportunity to benefit from the signature file Simon includes with his e-mails:

Daddy, what DOES < Formatting Drive C > mean?"
C:\> a:
WARNING: Pop-tart detected in drive A
Delete Kids (y/n)?
- Neale Morison


Category: Hardware, Win95
Issue: Oct 1996
Pages: 178

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