Re: Total loss with 2.4.0 (release)

[Mark van Walraven <markv@wave.co.nz>]

On Sat, Jan 27, 2001 at 12:12:53AM +0100, Peter 'Luna' Runestig wrote:
> In what situation would NT4 default to "fry the whole disk"? I've mixed
> Linux/DOS/Win98/NT4/Win2000 several ways on various hardware (>8 GB disks),
> with no problems at all actually.

I've had Windows suddenly using the 'begin' and 'end' (CHS) fields in
the partition table entry for a FAT32 partition when it should have been
using 'start' and 'length' (LBA) fields.  The result was that everything
on the FAT32 partition disappeared (according to Windows) and a couple
of block groups in an ext2 partition were clobbered.

Another time, I found what looked like bits of the page file in the
middle of a wrong partition when swapping onto the second disk.

Two associates have had ext2 partitions partially overwritten by
re-installing Win98.

>                                   Maybe "one single person having a problem
> does not mean in any way that this is the way it occurs for 100% of the
> userbase" ?

All the problems in the thread smell like geometry problems to me.  I
never experienced one myself until I got an evil combination of disk,
BIOS and filesystem.  Then, ZAP!

Regards,

Mark.
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