Re: [Qemu-devel] "A disk read error occurred"

[Mark Cave-Ayland <mark.cave-ayland@siriusit.co.uk>]

Jamie Lokier wrote:

> Also, sometimes when booting the BIOS can print a disk read error
> message, and an appropriate -hdachs will fix it.  I found that out
> when rebooting Windows 2000 after installing it from CD (both in
> QEMU), on a virtual disk 1GB in size.
> 
> -- Jamie

The message "A disk read error occurred" comes from the NT bootloader 
when it is unable to boot, typically caused by an incorrect drive geometry.

It sounds as if you are experiencing a similar problem to the one I 
blogged about here: 
http://www.ilande.co.uk/index.php?/archives/6-Migrating-an-NT4-VM-from-VMWare-to-NT4-Part-1.html. 
In other words, in order to run an existing NT4 image under QEMU I had 
to halve the number of heads in the NTFS BPB in order for things to work 
properly. I suspect that this is a bug in either QEMU/BIOS, but I have 
no idea where to even start looking.


HTH,

Mark.

-- 
Mark Cave-Ayland
Sirius Corporation - The Open Source Experts
http://www.siriusit.co.uk
T: +44 870 608 0063