Difficulty getting a large disk mounted

[Robert]

Jeff Vian wrote:
> On Wed, 2005-02-23 at 08:26 -0700, Robin Laing wrote:
> 
>>Jeff Vian wrote:
>>
>>>On Tue, 2005-02-22 at 15:54 +0000, Nigel Wade wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>>mconsidine at netreach.net wrote:
>>>>The hardware brower recognizes this as
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>>>>>>   Device Start End   Size(MB)  Type
>>>>>>>>>/dev/hdd
>>>>>>>>>   /hdd1  1     1460  11453     fat32
>>>>>>>>>          1     1460  11453     Free space
>>>>>>>>>   /hdd2  1461  7296  45779     No filesystem
>>>>>>>>>          7297  7298     10     Free space
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>Sorry for creating any confusion.
>>>>>
>>>>>The drive has data on it that I want to move over to the FC3
>>>>>system already installed.  The data is in a Windows
>>>>>filesystem
>>>>>structure and I don't want to have to put it into another
>>>>>system, boot it, hook it up to the LAN, etc.  I just want to
>>>>>get the existing FC3 system to recognize it so that I can
>>>>>pull
>>>>>the large files off that I need.  Once that is accomplished,
>>>>>repartitioning it using and ext2 or ext3 filesystem would be
>>>>>perfectly fine.
>>>>>
>>>>>Imagine the situation as this : you've got a perfectly well-
>>>>>running FC3 installation.  Now you need more diskspace. 
>>>>>Someone
>>>>>hands you a harddisk that had Win98 and it's filestructure
>>>>>on
>>>>>it.  The disk was formatted (apparently) using EZ-Drive. 
>>>>>You
>>>>>are welcome to reformat the disk, but only after copying a
>>>>>number of files over to the FC3 installation.
>>>>>
>>>>>That's as clear as I can make the situation.
>>>>>
>>>>>TIA,
>>>>>Matt
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>>According to installations instructions I found for EZ-Drive, you cannot use 
>>>>a EZ-Drive formatted disk with anything but Windows. From the partition 
>>>>table you showed earlier that would seem to be the case. /dev/hdd1 shows as 
>>>>FAT32 and may be ok, but the rest of the partition table doesn't make a lot 
>>>>of sense.
>>>>
>>>>What do you get if you run 'fdisk -l /dev/hdd' from a command line?
>>>>
>>>>
>>>
>>>Now you are tickling some long buried memories.
>>>
>>>Is EZ-Drive one of the disk compression tool that were popular some
>>>years ago?   If so, it _will_ only work in Winblows and the only option
>>>I know of is to put it in a windows machine and use the LAN to move the
>>>files.
>>>
>>>I have not used those tools since drives of 6GB and larger came
>>>available, but I know they had the driver for the compression on the
>>>boot sector so it will work with Winblows, but not on other OSes.
>>>The actual data was in a compressed file, not written to a filesystem.
>>>
>>>
>>
>>This is a good answer.  It isn't really a compression program but a 
>>translation program to work with larger drives than the bios or OS 
>>would handle.  I also found that EZ based drives may not work on newer 
>>motherboards as they are detected properly by the bios.
>>
> 
> 
> Now you are getting back to even more fogged memory. :-)  I dimly
> remember a time when drives were larger than the BIOS could recognize
> and the drivers needed to map them for BIOS to handle. Have not used a
> machine with that old a BIOS for some time though.
> 
> 
>>I now remember this software and found this link that will explain 
>>that what you say is the only way.
>>
>>http://www.seagate.com/support/kb/disc/translation.html
>>
> 
> Good point, and a handy reference for those times when needed.
> 
> 
>>Instead of spending all this time to get around the problem, put the 
>>drive in an old computer and transfer the files.
>>
>>I did see that there was a kernel patch some time ago that would allow 
>>drives with overlays to work.  Search google for an answer.
>>
>>-- 
>>Robin Laing
>>
> 
> 
Speaking of fogged memories, there exists a utility than can recover 
partition tables. I THINK it will get rid of the evil crap deposited by 
the likes of Max-Blast and calculate a partition table that will allow 
the partitions to be mounted by Fedora or Windows.  I have an idle drive 
in another box with stuff dating back to Win3.1 that I thought was lost 
forever until I found the program.
I'll keep trying to remember the program's name but I'm sure that one of 
you youngsters will think of it 'way before I do.