Hard Drive Stats

[Mel Bishop]

I think this has been queried before but I can't seem to find it
anywhere in the PB/DOS forum. I need to get drive stats on a
hard drive over 8GB (total capacity, space-a, etc).

Thanks
Cheers


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[Tom Hanlin]

I don't think this can be done from DOS. It's not even supported in all
versions of Windows. Your best bet, though, would probably be to SHELL
to a Windows program that returns the results (or an error code).

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Tom Hanlin
PowerBASIC Staff

[Mel Bishop]

I wuz afraid you wuz gonna say sum'thin like that. Thanks I
would prefer not to shell out but if that's what it takes....


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[Matthew Berg]

Read the Knowledge Base articles Q153550 and Q69912. Basically, it is impossible for DOS itself to have knowledge of HDD capacities larger than 8GB, because it is limited to using the CHS drive geometry. You may be able to take advantage of the INT 13h extensions in your own programs to overcome this limitation.

[Mel Bishop]

Thanks for the info Matthew. Didn't help much. Didn't really
expect it to tho' .

I have a routine that uses int13 to read/write absolute sectors
on a hard/floppy drive. They use the CHS so I can access a
maximum of 1023 (0-1023) tracks, 255 (0-255) heads and 63 (1-63)
sectors per track. That gives me a total of 8MB.

I am trying to experiment with LBA addressing to access drives
larger than 8mb but don't seem to be able to get the hang of it.

BTW, what I am trying to accompish is a DOS based drive repair /
file recovery program so when a drive goes south, the user may
have a chance of recovering important files. This is, of course,
assuming he/she doesn't have a current backup.

I got it going pretty well for drives <= 8GB using CHS but I am
going to need LBA capabilities as well. This is what I am after
now.

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[This message has been edited by Mel Bishop (edited March 18, 2002).]

[Matthew Berg]

As Tom said "I don't think this can be done from DOS...", I was just trying to point out that there is such a known limitation with respect to DOS.

As for information on the INT 13h extensions, try Ralf Brown's Interrupt List.

[Andrew Collins]

Originally posted by Matthew Berg:
As for information on the INT 13h extensions, try Ralf Brown's Interrupt List.[/B]

Try Going here http://www.pvv.ntnu.no/~steinarh/grub/prog-ref.html

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[Mike Doty]

Steve Gibson's Spinrite is DOS based
so it might be possible. http://www.grc.com

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[Peter Lameijn]

One version of DR-Dos (build 7.05, made for OnTrack diskmanager) should work with
Fat32 / LBA disks > 8GB. (Never tried it though...)

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Peter.
mailto[email protected][email protected]</A>

[This message has been edited by Peter Lameijn (edited March 19, 2002).]

[Mark Collins]

I worked on this a couple of years back and thought this might
be of help. In order to address the drive (over 8.4GB which
is possible provided that you r BIOS supports LBA addressing)
directly you must use low level Int13 routines (actually Int13
ext). I have a couple routines/structures that I wrote that
should help you out. Please understand that you must read the
MBR (physical sector 0) from the disk and then use the QUAD
number of sectors to do sector by sector read/writes. ANyway,
here is the base code and the TYPE DEFS for each of the necessary
structures: (yes, I know it could be done cleaner but I am not
into making it pretty I am into making it work)

Mark

Type DriveParameters
Size AS WORD
InformationFlagTable AS WORD
CylindersTotal AS DWORD
HeadsTotal AS DWORD
SectorsPerTrack AS DWORD
SectorsTotal AS QUAD
BytesPerSector AS WORD
End Type

TYPE XInt13BufferStructure
PacketSize AS BYTE
Reserved AS BYTE
BlocksToTransfer AS WORD
TransferBuffer AS BYTE PTR
StartingBlock AS QUAD
END TYPE

FUNCTION I13_48 (DriveInfo AS DriveParameters) As QUAD

DriveInfo.size = SIZEOF(DriveInfo)

REG %AX, &H4800
REG %DX, &H0080
REG %DS, VARSEG(DriveInfo)
REG %SI, VARPTR(DriveInfo)
CALL INTERRUPT %INT13

IF UCASE$(COMMAND$) = "DRIVEINFO" THEN
PRINT
PRINT DriveInfo.Size;" Buffer Size"
PRINT DriveInfo.InformationFlagTable;" Flag Table"
PRINT DriveInfo.CylindersTotal;" Total Cylinders"
PRINT DriveInfo.HeadsTotal;" Heads Total "
PRINT DriveInfo.SectorsPerTrack;" SectorsPerTrack"
PRINT DriveInfo.BytesPerSector;" BytesPerSector"
PRINT
END IF

FUNCTION = CQUD(DriveInfo.SectorsTotal)

END FUNCTION

SUB I13_43(SectorNumber AS QUAD)
DIM XInt13Buffer AS XInt13BufferStructure

'Initialize Buffer Information For Write
XInt13Buffer.PacketSize? = &H10
XInt13Buffer.Reserved? = &H00
XInt13Buffer.BlocksToTransfer?? = 1
XInt13Buffer.TransferBuffer = VARPTR32(Sector)
XInt13Buffer.StartingBlock&& = SectorNumber&&

REG %AX,&H4300
REG %DX,&H0080
'Load Segment Pointer For Disk Address Packet Buffer Into DS Register
REG %DS,VARSEG(XInt13Buffer)
'Load Offset Pointer For Disk Address Packet Buffer Into SI Register
REG %SI,VARPTR(XInt13Buffer)
CALL INTERRUPT %INT13

END SUB

SUB I13_42(SectorNumber AS QUAD)
DIM XInt13Buffer AS XInt13BufferStructure

'Initialize Buffer Information For Write
XInt13Buffer.PacketSize? = &H10
XInt13Buffer.Reserved? = &H00
XInt13Buffer.BlocksToTransfer?? = 1
XInt13Buffer.TransferBuffer = VARPTR32(Sector)
XInt13Buffer.StartingBlock&& = SectorNumber&&

REG %AX,&H4200
REG %DX,&H0080
'Load Segment Pointer For Disk Address Packet Buffer Into DS Register
REG %DS,VARSEG(XInt13Buffer)
'Load Offset Pointer For Disk Address Packet Buffer Into SI Register
REG %SI,VARPTR(XInt13Buffer)
CALL INTERRUPT %INT13

END SUB

[Mark Collins]

All,

Here is another way that you might try. It is a little cleaner
than the last piece that I sent out to you to attempt.


DIM DriveNum AS INTEGER
DIM Segment AS WORD
DIM Offset AS WORD

DriveNum% = ASCII(UCASE$(Drive$)) - 64

IF DriveNum% < 3 THEN
DriveNum% = 3
ELSE
DriveNum% = DriveNum% + 125
END IF

AXRegister% = X13Command? + &H40
SHIFT LEFT AXRegister%, 8

SELECT CASE X13Command?
CASE %CMD_INSTALLED
REG %BX,&H55AA

CASE %CMD_READ_SECTOR, %CMD_WRITE_SECTOR
IF (NumberOfSectors?? = 0) OR (NumberOfSectors?? = 1) THEN
DIM SectorBuffer AS X13Buffer
ELSE
DIM SectorBuffer(NumberOfSectors - 1) AS X13Buffer
END IF

SectorBuffer.PacketSize? = &H10
SectorBuffer.Reserved? = 0
SectorBuffer.BlocksToTransfer?? = NumberOfSectors??
SectorBuffer.TransferBuffer = Buffer
SectorBuffer.StartingBlock&& = StartingSector&&

REG %DS,VARSEG(SectorBuffer)
REG %SI,VARPTR(SectorBuffer)

CASE %CMD_GET_PARAMETERS
Offset?? = BITS??(Buffer???)
ROTATE RIGHT Buffer???, 16
Segment?? = BITS??(Buffer???)

REG %DS,Segment??
REG %SI,Offset??

CASE %CMD_SET_HARDWARE_CONFIG
AXRegister% = X13Command + &H5E
SHIFT LEFT AXRegister%, 16

CASE ELSE
END SELECT

REG %DX,DriveNum%
REG %AX,AXRegister%

CALL INTERRUPT %INT13

CarryFlag% = REG(%FLAGS)
AXRegister% = REG(%AX)
BXRegister% = REG(%BX)
CarryFlag% = BIT(CarryFlag%, 0)
IF CarryFlag% THEN
IF (X13Command = %CMD_INSTALLED) AND (BXRegister% <> &HAA55) THEN
FUNCTION = %False
ELSE
IF INSTR(UCASE$(COMMAND$), "DEBUG") THEN
SHIFT RIGHT AXRegister%, 8
CALL DiskStatus(ByCopy Register%)
END IF
END IF
FUNCTION = %False
END IF

END

'hey it ain't pretty, but it works...'

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[Michael Torrie]

Don't want to sound zealous or fanatical, but with today's hardware, recovery operations are probably best done from linux. It wouldn't be too hard to build a boot disk or cd with a basic linux kernel on it and some vfat utilities. Linux has no problems with most ide drives (scsi too if you made a boot cd with extra drivers). If you have the skills to do disk recovery using powerbasic, then you could probably handle C to make up some utilities. A text-only shell would be quite compact.

Anyway, I've purchased a box of 3 inch CDRs and I'm going to make 2 rescue disks (maybe even cut them to business card size). One rescue disk will be dos-based, and have basic partitioning utilities on it (like partition magic, maybe a free one too). This would also be of help to fix hosed windows fat32 systems.

The other disk would be a linux kernel, generic drivers, and utilities for fixing linux systems, resetting win nt/2000 passwords, fixing things generally.

cheers,
Michael

[Daryl Lock]

Originally posted by Peter Lameijn:
One version of DR-Dos (build 7.05, made for OnTrack diskmanager) should work with
Fat32 / LBA disks > 8GB. (Never tried it though...)

DR-DOS 7.03 has a native FAT32 driver...BUT...while it can see a HDD at least up to my own limit of 40Gb..it won't allow read/write access to partitions larger than 2Gb because it is limited to a cluster size of 16k and FAT32 clusters get incrementaly larger over that size - ie <2Gb =16k <8gb = 32k and anything over that, 64k clusters.

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[Joep van Steen]

Well Linux would be nice to run from, waiting for PB for Linux

Still, I have several DOS utilities written with revovery in mind, and
DOS is still fine. I use int13h ext disk access similar to the code
posted in this thread.

I deliver the tools on preconfigured FreeDOS bootdiskette images.
Newest FreeDOS kernel offers FAT32 support. I have tested this and
so far didn't run in to problems.

I really like PB and I wouldn't want to do this in C, never tried it
anyway...

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Joep

http://www.diydatarecovery.nl