Hello Murray,

09 Nov 99 19:28, Murray Lesser wrote to Linda Proulx:

ML> As I remember the original, the topic being discussed was Boot
ML> Manager.  If all your bootable partitions are primary partitions on
ML> the same drive, they all have the same partition letter (usually C:
ML> on the first HD, since neither DOS nor Windows can boot from any
ML> other partition).

Drive letters are assigned at boot time by the booting operating system. The
first primary partition will gets drive letter C: (regardless of which
partition is booted) and all other primary partitions on the same disk with
the recognized true partition type will get subsequent drive letters (in the
order they are laid out on the harddisk).

ML> As a consequence, none of the booted systems can see any other
ML> bootable partition because you can have only one active C: drive on a
ML> system at a time.

This is not true. I know DOS can see them all because I've seen that on
someone else' system with this setup.

ML> With this exception, in general, OS/2 can see all primary partitions
ML> and extended partitions, but may not be able to read them.

I haven't tried OS/2 with this setup, so I don't know if OS/2 will run OK with 
this setup. I have no reason to believe OS/2 wouldn't run OK, but I don't
know. Nor would I try.

ML> OTOH, neither DOS nor Win95 can see partitions formatted HPFS, whether
ML> primary or extended.  This is not a valid reason not to use HPFS for
ML> big partitions; perhaps it is a valid reason not to boot DOS nor Win95
ML> :-).

DOS and any winxx version don't recognize and so can't use HPFS partitions,
but not because they can't see them. :)

ML> Do not ever, ever, ever, use Norton Utilities (or any other
ML> DOS/Windows disk-fixer utility) on a partition (or drive) containing
ML> OS/2 files, UNLESS you are really an expert on the OS/2 internal file
ML> structures and know exactly what you are doing!!!

You don't have to be an expert on the OS/2 internal file structures (do you
mean HPFS structures here?), but one has to know exactly what he/she is doing
when using a disk editor, including Disk Editor from the Norton Utilities.

ML> At the worst, you will lose your desktop, which is mainly stored as
ML> OS/2 Extended Attributes.

If OS/2 is installed on a FAT partition. If OS/2 is installed on a HPFS
partition, plain DOS can't access it because it doesn't know HPFS.

ML> that one never use FAT partitions (of any size) containing more than
ML> 500 files.

On a FAT partition: if there are more than 500 files in the same directory and 
only when that directory is accessed.

  Greetings   -=Eddy=-        email: eddy.thilleman@net.hcc.nl

... See the Future; See OS/2.  Be the Future; Run OS/2.
--- GoldED/2 3.0.1