Re: [Qemu-devel] [PATCH] Physical hard disk drive for win32

[Stefan Weil <weil@mail.berlios.de>]

Johannes Schindelin schrieb:
> I think I fixed it. Since I am not your regular Windows user (I only use
>
> Windows when I have to), I cannot tell if it works, though.
>
> It is here: http://repo.or.cz/w/qemu/dscho.git?a=shortlog;h=diskgeometry
>
> Any testing (especially the physical drive on Windows < XP) would be very
> much appreciated.
> ...
> Ciao,
> Dscho
With your patch, W2K will still see a wrong disk size.
This is caused by the fact that the size of a modern harddisk
has nothing to do with tracks per cylinder or sectors per track
- it is not simply the product of four values.

You can use a disk to some degree even when some part at
the end is inaccessible, but it is also possible to destroy
it (for example if a partition tool "corrects" the disk
size in the boot sector) or get other kinds of errors.

I prefer a patch which gives correct values for all
Windows versions and will send one as soon as possible.

Even without a patch, the current code in CVS HEAD
still allows compilation using MinGW on any Windows.
QEMU will also run on the same Windows variants as
before. The only thing no longer working on W2K and
older variants is physical hard disk access. I think
this is better than working with a wrong disk size!

Regards,
Stefan