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Minix/CD-ROM-2.0/DOSUTILS/FIPS/SPECIAL.DOC

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+FIPS 1.5 - file SPECIAL.DOC
+---------------------------
+
+S1. Use with Stacker/SuperStor/Doublespace etc.
+S2. Use with OS/2
+S3. Use with OnTrack Disk Manager and similar drivers
+
+
+------------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+S1. Use with Stacker/SuperStor/Doublespace etc.
+
+These programs are used to increase disk space by compressing files. They
+all work similarly. When installed, they create a compressed volume on the
+disk, into which all the files are moved. This compressed volume is a big
+file that fills up almost all space on the disk. After booting with the
+compression driver, the previous drive C: that contains the compressed
+volume is renamed to D:, and the compressed volume itself becomes C:.
+
+From reports I received from users of Stacker and DoubleSpace, I distilled
+the following scheme. If you have difficulties, please let me know.
+
+a. Make sure that there is enough space on the compressed partition to be
+   split.
+b. Use the Checkdisk program that comes with the compression software.
+c. Remove the Windows swapfile if you have one.
+d. Decrease the size of the compressed volume with the utilities that come
+   with the compression software.
+e. Defragment the uncompressed drive that contains the compressed volume
+   (in most cases drive D:)
+f. use FIPS as described in FIPS.DOC
+
+If your system will not let you defragment the uncompressed drive or if
+the compressed volume can not be defragmented because it has the hidden
+attribute set, FIPS might not offer as much space for the new partition
+as is shown in the directory listing of the uncompressed drive. You should
+add the following steps:
+
+e1. Copy the defragmentation program (e.g. diskopt.exe, defrag.exe) of the
+    system to the boot disk
+e2. Boot without the compression device driver. This may be tricky, since in
+    some systems the driver is part of the system files on the boot disk. Try
+    using a boot disk from an older DOS version, or consult your manuals.
+e3. Remove Hidden, Readonly and System attributes from compressed volume
+    (use dir /a:h to find the name of the the compressed volume)
+e4. Defragment the partition.
+
+It was reported that you can use FIPS either with or without the compression
+driver loaded.
+
+
+S2. Use with OS/2
+
+FIPS is known to have problems with OS/2, especially with the dual boot
+feature. This is partly due to the fact that OS/2 dual boot uses two copies
+of the boot sector - if only one copy is changed by FIPS, OS/2 will not
+work properly.
+But even when taking this into consideration, some people have reported
+strange error messages by OS/2. I encourage you to give FIPS a try, but
+make sure to save the root and boot sector to floppy disk with FIPS before
+making any changes. FIPS might work if you
+
+a. Remove dual boot from the partition if you use it. I don't know if and
+   how this is possible, please consult your manual or call IBM. If you
+   find out, please let me know, so that I can include this info.
+b. Boot from a bootable DOS disk
+c. Run FIPS (make sure to make FIPS save the root and boot sector to floppy)
+d. Reboot, check if everything is ok under DOS
+e. Boot from your OS/2 installation disk and reinstall dual boot if
+   necessary.
+f. Boot to OS/2 and look if everything works as expected.
+
+If e. does not work (OS/2 complains with 'hardware error' or something
+similar), use RESTORRB to undo the changes FIPS made, reboot again and
+reinstall dual boot (if necessary).
+
+So far I did not find out what OS/2 complains about. Since I do not use
+OS/2, I have to rely on user reports. If you try FIPS with OS/2,
+I would like to hear about it. Any information is welcome, even if it
+is just "it worked" or "it did not work". If you have an idea what might
+be the problem or any technical information, please tell me about it.
+
+
+S3. Use with OnTrack Disk Manager and similar drivers
+
+Note: Everything said here also applies to similar device drivers that
+perform the same functions as OnTrack. OnTrack is just the most widely
+used such system.
+
+I'll try to start at the beginning:
+
+Older BIOSes have a limit on the 'drive geometry' built in, i.e. they
+can only properly handle disk drives of up to 1024 cylinders, 16 heads
+and 63 sectors. Given a sector size of 512, this results in a total
+limit of 504 MB. Most hard drives are far larger nowadays, especially
+in the number of cylinders. So a method for accessing these large drives
+had to be devised. For compatibility reasons, the cylinder and sector
+count could not be extended, but there was still room in the number of
+heads value - up to 256 heads.
+
+Modern BIOSes (i.e. BIOSes prepared for EIDE drives) do exactly this,
+they trick DOS into thinking that the disk has less than 1024 cylinders,
+but more than 16 heads (this is indicated by 'extended sector translation'
+or 'logical block addressing' in the BIOS setup). The same is true for
+SCSI disks - in this case the translation is done by the BIOS of the
+SCSI controller. If you have one of these, you will probably not be using
+OnTrack anyway.
+
+OnTrack Disk Manager is a special program that does the translation in
+software. It installs its own boot program in the hard disk's master
+boot record, so that it is loaded before any other disk access is
+done. This means that you can not access the hard disk without loading
+the OnTrack device driver first.
+
+This is also true for FIPS. If you just boot from a floppy disk, you will
+not be able to access the C: drive, and FIPS will not work. As far as
+I know, you _must_ boot from the hard disk, after which FIPS will work
+properly.
+
+Note to Linux users: You can NOT use this scheme to create a Linux
+partition. This is because the partitioning information that FIPS modifies
+is on a level above the OTDM driver, so you can only access them after
+having loaded the driver. Since Linux does not use DOS drivers, it can
+not access the new partition. The only thing that Linux will see is a
+large non-DOS partition: the OnTrack partition (system indicator byte
+54h or 56h).
+
+Unfortunately, I currently know of no way to get rid of the OnTrack
+device driver or to split off a partition for use under Linux without
+completely reformatting and thus losing all data. It might be possible,
+given sufficient technical information, but since I personally don't
+use it, I can't investigate further into this.
+
+If you are prepared to reformat the disk (after backing up all your data),
+you can just delete the OnTrack partition with Linux fdisk and create
+new partitions as you require. Note that you can create a DOS partition
+at the beginning of the disk. You won't need OnTrack to use it, as
+long as its last cylinder is less than 1024. Linux of course has no
+problems accessing the cylinders beyond 1024, so you can use all the rest
+of the disk for Linux partitions. In case of problems, read the EIDE-
+Mini-HOWTO, it contains some more information on this from the Linux
+point of view.