Here's a trick: A shareware hard drive wiping utility, BCwipe, does
it's wiping by writing to disk in files of exactly 20MB in size from
the bottom to the top of whatever partition you're wiping. (At least
it does this for me within Windows 98se)
Once installed, you invoke it by right-clicking the drive letter you
want cleanse within Windows Explorer. If you let complete or cancel
the wiping, it will gracefully exit and delete these temp files. IF,
however, you were to kill this session of Windows Explorer, this will
also abort completion of the disk wiping but in such a way that these
temp files will be left behind.
The temp files are placed within a temp folder "~BCWipe.tmp". When
killing Windows Explorer and starting up another instance, I'll rename
this folder "Junk1", "Junk2", "Junk3", etc....
It appears that these files are filling the partition from one end to
the other.
Oh, and be sure to set the wiping to a "User defined pass quantity" of
"1" because you want to do this as quickly as possible and not because
you want your wiping to be truly secure. (Seven passes are supposedly
recommended number fr the truly paranoid.)
I only mention this particular disk wiping utility because it's the
one that I happened to have installed on my PC. I'm sure that all of
the other such wiping programs work under the same principle.
It was by doing this that I was able to reproduce some truly bizarre
errors on a Hitachi 185GB drive.
Here's an example: If my primary DOS partition is greater than 32GB
and the last logical DOS partion is also greater than 32GB, filling
up one partition won't mutilate the other until one or the other gets
filled with more than 32GB of data.
I had hoped that by limiting each partition to under 32GB I could work
around such problems. No such luck. I don't recall the exact
circumstance but I created an 8MB partition (the smallest possible
with this drive) as my last logical the first logical DOS partition
To add to my confusion, I read somewhere that it may be possible to
use the whole drive in Windows 98 (even though Microsoft won't release
a fix unlike for Windows 2000 and Windows XP within there respective
service packs) IF you do your partitioning strictly within a true DOS
session where the BIOS is in use and you have the 48-bit LBA support
that the a7n8x is supposed to have.
This is truly frustrating. This was one thing that I failed to keep
track of. I've installed the improved version of fdisk that Microsoft
has created but I can't recall the exact circumstance that I used it
and I did format some of the partitions from within Windows Explorer.
This whole exercise has drained me. i just want the damn thing to
work.
I'm getting into a foul mood now. When I'm more inclined I will repost
this into a new thread and get a proper discussion going. Mainly, I
would lke to know that, if Microsoft won't create a Windows 98 fix for
this, might nVidia?
After all, Microsoft refused to release USB 2.0 drivers for Windows 98
only because they're scumbags who would like to coerce you into
getting XP. It was others, including nVidia, who came up with the
drivers.
When you think you are finished, you should test the drive by copying
files onto the drive, until you get past the 128GB (137x10**9 bytes)
physical mark. If the install didn't take properly, you'll find the
file system will "fall over" on the drive, once you fill it past 128GB.
Good luck, as I have no idea what percentage of people succeed at what
you are attempting
I presume the people who fail must be returning
the drive to their vendor.
[ BTW - For those of you with Intel chipsets, IAA support for >128GB
is only available in very recent versions of IAA. Using the Microsoft
IDE driver, the right service pack gives you the capability. ]
Paul
