RS> Corse in your case the other question arises of why you
RS> cant have both the 2.5GB drives on the primary ribbon cable,

PE> That was historical, and before I had two 2.5 gig drives anyway.
PE> I will have to reevaluate that.  I have basically left the 420
PE> meg C drive for the BBS.  What would you recommend for me?

The usual thing would be to have the pair of 2.5GB drives on the primary
IDE cable, with LBA enabled on both. Mainly because those are by far the
fastest drives you have, so you obviously want to use those for most of
the actual work you do in the sense of stuff that does much drive activity.

The two older smaller drives are better used
as repositorys for stuff you dont use as much.

Particularly if you say backup the crucial data to one of
the small drives say daily, because the two new drives are
at a bit more risk of dying in the first few months of use.

Corse, if you cant get OS2 installed even on a single 2.5GB drive in
use by itself, thats all completely academic and you are better off
continuing to use one of the older drives as your master on the primary
IDE cable until IBM gets their act into gear on fixing the problem.

PE> I need more space for the BBS (including file areas).  In
PE> fact, I have relocated 200 or something meg onto my E drive
PE> to clear space for the C drive which only has 70-odd meg free.

Yeah, nice to have lots of free space for a while, still luxuriating myself.

RS> where you can set those params and put the older
RS> smaller drives on the secondary ribbon cable where
RS> you cant, and you dont need to even use LBA anyway.

PE> Well,

PE> 1. I use LBA for the 540 meg drive, since it is also over the limit.

In theory. It gives 528MB with LBA disabled tho, and 12MB is completely
trivial in your total of around 6GB. The main advantage of not enabling
LBA on that drive is that you could move it to a machine with an older
non LBA motherboard effortlessly if that was ever necessary.

PE> 2. I haven't actually felt the need to change the
PE> parameters (cylinders, heads + tracks) on ANY of my drives yet.

Are you saying that you just enabled the LBA and it still looked fine ?
That is often the case with those particular drives which use a 63 sector
per track set of CHS numbers, the data usually wont go bye bye if you
turn LBA on. Coz the sector sequence doesnt change.

RS> I dont think you have ever said very explicitly just what you
RS> currently are doing as far as which is the primary master and slave
RS> and secondary master and slave as far as physical drives are concerned.

PE> I think I have said that many times.

Nope. Particularly just what you did and did not
change on that stuff as you added the 2.5GB drives.

PE> 420, 540, 2.5, 2.5, ie primary master, primary
PE> slave, secondary master, secondary slave.

RS> Its VERY dangerous for your data, but I would personally attempt
RS> that very much cleaner config of the 2*2.5GB drives on the primary
RS> IDE cable, initially just having only one 2.5GB drive on the primary
RS> IDE cable, no other drives at all, with the empty 2.5GB drive, and try
RS> THAT config and just see what you can do about installing OS2 on it.

PE> Why is it cleaner to have the 2.5 gigs up front?

The newer the drive, the more PHYSICAL sectors per track its normally
got. Thats not the 63 sectors you see in the CMOS, its got more than
that and that varys in bands of cylinders across the platter too.

Those Sirocco drives rotate faster than your older smaller drives too, from
memory one is a Conner CFS540A, the 540MB drive. Forget what the 420 is now.

PE> The small drive up front is the one that
PE> I am most likely to be able to back up,

There is no need to think in terms of physical drives for backing up,
its more useful to think in terms of partitions, not physical drives.

PE> and therefore be in a position to scratch if the need arises.

God knows what this is about.

Anyway, the short story is that there is a lot to be said for having
your new, fast, high capacity drives as the first physical drives.
The main contraindication is that they are a little more likely to
die since they are much newer. The two small drives are well outside
the infant mortality and havent yet got into the elderly phase.

All rather academic if OS2 wont install properly on the 2.5GB drives tho.
@EOT:

---