[aclug-L] Re: disk-management software .. Viruses?

[David Carmichael <dec2955@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Jeff -

WOW!

Would this mean that even the 'low level format' software from the drives
manufacture could not reformat the drive correctly if the MBR was messed up?

If it was not that the drive is now knocking like an old 8 cylinders car on
bad gas....

--David

----- Original Message -----
From: "Jeff Vian" <jvian10@xxxxxxxxxxx>
To: <discussion@xxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Tuesday, May 28, 2002 5:45 PM
Subject: [aclug-L] Re: disk-management software .. Viruses?


>
> David Carmichael wrote:
> > |    I am willing to bet a moderate sum of money that
> > |    there was in-fact no virus on the old hard disk, or
> > |    at least on the MBR.  This sounds an awful lot like
> > |    there was some type of disk-management software
> > |    like (Western Digital's OnTrack or Maxtor's
> > |    MaxBlast) written into the MBR.  This software
> > |    commonly comes with hard drives so that one can
> > |    get around certain types of BIOS <-> HD size barriers
> >
> > Wouldn't this show up when booted from the drive in question?
> >
>
> I did not think of this myself since it has been a long time since I ran
> into this problem.
>
> However, it may not work or even show up as anything except errors on a
> system that uses the drive in native mode.  The C-H-S mapping could
> easily prevent the drive manager from even starting.  Systems that use
> LBA addressing often can't even load the drive manager because sector
> sizes are different and cylinder boundaries are way off. -- Thus sector
> 0 is even a different size and the boot record may appear invalid. Or it
> is valid, but the manager may not function properly because of the
> changes in the hardware/bios on the new system.
> I have even seen it where forcing the bios to NOT use LBA would allow
> the drive manager to function, but LBA caused the errors.
>
> Newer system boards probably have a bios that does not allow a choice of
> LBA or normal mode.
>
> I had a drive in an early 486 that I migrated to a pentium and when I
> did I had to wipe the drive manager using the "fdisk /mbr" trick to
> remove the software that was trying to make it think the drive was
> differrent than it actually was. Then a new fdisk and a new format and
> the drive was fine
>
> AFAIK the bios inability to support the newer larger drives was the
> cause of needing the drivbe amanagers to fool the bios into believing
> the drive was physically smaller than it actually was by using the faked
> mapping of the manager. Then the changes in bios to support larger
> drives made the managers obssolete for the newer systems and often meant
> the drives had to be repartitioned after moving them to a system that
> did not need the manager to see the full drive size.
>
>
> > I have seen this software loaded on older computers and it always (in
the
> > past) has a 'title' screen display durring the boot-up of the system?
> >
> > --David
> >
> >
> > -- This is the discussion@xxxxxxxxx list.  To unsubscribe,
> > visit http://www.complete.org/cgi-bin/listargate-aclug.cgi
> >
>
>
>
> -- This is the discussion@xxxxxxxxx list.  To unsubscribe,
> visit http://www.complete.org/cgi-bin/listargate-aclug.cgi
>
>


-- This is the discussion@xxxxxxxxx list.  To unsubscribe,
visit http://www.complete.org/cgi-bin/listargate-aclug.cgi