[Ham-Computers] RE: Help on HD setup

Hsu, Aaron [email protected]
Thu, 12 Sep 2002 11:22:49 -0700


What's happening is that Win98 can't recognize the "formatting" of the HD.  You've probably installed the "drive overlay" software that's part of the Data Lifeguard tools.  

The overlay software should only be used when your system's BIOS doesn't support the full capacity of the drive.  The overlay program does installs itself in the boot sector of the drive.  When the system boots off the HD, it loads the overlay and the overlay then handles all requests to and from the HD - this allows the system to "see" the full capacity of the drive.

If your system BIOS doesn't support the full 20GB, then using the overlay is necessary if you can't get a BIOS update that does support the full 20GB.  When using a drive with an overlay, the system *must* boot off the HD with the overlay (or a floppy with the overlay software) in order for the drive to work since the drive may be written in a format that only the overlay can recognize.  This is why Win98 is balking when you boot off the CD...it just doesn't know how to handle the format on the HD.  If you must use the overlay software, then you'll need to copy the CD-ROM drivers and MSCDEX.EXE to the HD, modify the CONFIG.SYS to load the CD-ROM drivers, and boot from the HD to start the overlay software.  Once at a DOS prompt, load MSCDEX so DOS can recognize the CDFS format  on the CD and you'll be able to  start the Win98 setup from the CD.  Yes, it *sounds* complicated, but it really isn't.

One possible work-around is to buy an ATA-33/66/100/133 controller.  This is basically a replacement HD controller for your system.  The advantage with this is that the controllers currently available will support the max transfer rate of your HD (something your system's HD controller may not support depending on how old it is).  No overlay software to deal with, but there is a cost - usually about $60.

The following alternative will work if your system's BIOS *will* support the full capacity of the HD.  Remove the overlay software; there should be an option to do this in the Lifeguard tools - if not, try "low-level formatting" or "zeroing" the drive using the Lifeguard tools but don't allow it to re-install the overlay software.  Once this is done and the drive is "clean", then you should be able to boot off the CD and Win98 should recognize the drive as "clean" and usable.  This is the *BEST* solution as it allows the system to "natively" access the drive with no "middleman".  Most systems sold in the past 2 years should be able to support drives upto 32GB.  Newer systems support upto 137GB and a new proposed spec (48-bit LBA) will support some insane petabyte capacity.

Send me an e-mail if you have any questions about this...I'll try to answer whatever I can - I may not always be right, but I'm never wrong... <g>

  - Aaron Hsu, NN6O (ex-KD6DAE)
    {nn6o}@arrl.net
    {athsu}@unistudios.com
    No-QRO Int'l #1,000,006
    . -..- - .-. .-   ".... . .- ...- -.--"
 
p.s. HPFS is the file format used by MAC OS'.  NTFS is a format used by WindowsNT/2000/XP.



-----Original Message-----
Subject: [Ham-Computers] Help on HD setup


I just received back a repaired 20 gig HD from WD. I installed this
using the Lifeguard Tool setup disk.
I set up the whole HD as a FAT 32 system.
Everything seemed to be working except when I try and install Win98 from
the CD the screen displays this:
Cannot create a temporary directory.
If you have a HPFS or NTFS installed on you HD, you will have to create
an MS-DOS boot partition to set up Windows.
I have no idea what HPFS or NTFS is or where it came from.
David, K3ASI