Re: Passing geometry to parted on a floppy

[Andrew Clausen]

On Sun, Aug 17, 2003 at 07:06:41PM -0500, Mike Oliver wrote:
> > Unless you have an old machine (>5 years?), you probably don't need
> > to worry.  Try setting the LBA flag on your FAT partitions, and
> > see if Windows breaks.
> 
> 5 years is probably close to what it is.  It's a Pentium II MMX at
> 266 MHz (the machine is just a stopgap until I can buy a new
> mobo/processor and rebuild my broken machine).

I think it will be OK.  (Sounds like a top-of-the-range from 5 years
ago... ;)

> I don't know how to set the LBA flag.  Nothing in the parted
> docs (version 1.2.11) tells me how to do this,

You need a newer version of Parted.  "set 1 lba on", IIRC.

> If my BIOS is too old to support LBA then presumably it will just
> ignore the flag, so it shouldn't break anything, right?

No.  The flag isn't to tell your BIOS anything.  It's to tell Windows.
If Windows works, then you're set :)  If it doesn't, then you need
to set lba off, and start thinking about CHS.

> My linux install disks are Mandrake 8.1 (or maybe 8.2); I could try
> DiskDrake, but does it safely resize FAT16/VFAT partitions?  Especially
> if there's a question about whether Linux is reading the geometry
> right?

DiskDrake faces the same issues.  I believe it doesn't do anything
differently in this regard.

> Did I join the wrong mailing list?  I subscribed to bug-parted
> but saw your reply only from the cc.

Odd... you should have received it from the list as well.  Perhaps
delivery was delayed?  (Got it yet?)

Cheers,
Andrew