12 Go in a Libretto [8/2/2000]

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Mail me any comments, suggestions, corrections etc, thanks. Forgive my bad english.

You can find this file at my Web page : http://www.pacher.net..

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The 12 Gb IBM Hard drive

The hard drive model is IBM DARA-212000 12.07 Gb hard drive 9.5 mm high. I bought it at Weesco. The model fit a little tight compared to my old Toshiba 4 Go 8.45 mm hard drive but I haven’t got any problem with it up to now. The drive is also a little noisy so you might prefer to buy the Toshiba model which is now available. With Sandra it achieves 4332 in the drive index which isn’t outstanding.

The Libretto

The Libretto is a CT 100 model overclocked to 266 Mhz and upgraded to 64 Megs of ram.

Steps to upgrade

The main problem is not installing the hard drive but making the Libretto recognize the 12 Go hard drive and putting a blank partition on the drive where the hibernation data goes so that your hard drive data don’t get corrupted when the Libretto hibernates.

1) The hard drive is only recognized as an 8 Go drive without Disk Manager 9.52 that you can download on IBM site. So you need first to download and install this utility.

2) First I had to understand how the Libretto sets up its hidden partition. On my old 4 Gb drive, the disk geometry reported by partinfo (translated) was 517 cylinders, 255 heads and 63 sectors. Disk manager reported the true geometry to be 525 cylinders.

3) Then I installed the IBM drive without the disk manager boot. The disk geometry reported by partinfo (translated) was 1017 cylinders, 255 heads and 63 sectors. Disk manager reported the true geometry to be 1467 cylinders.

4) So I made the hypothesis that the hidden partition even with disk manager on would begin on cylinder 1018 up to cylinder 1025.

5) To test this hypothesis, I made a first partition of exactly 7977.6 MB ending on cylinder 1017 and another partition from 1017 to 1026 which is 76 MB. This last partition was formatted as D:

6) I copied some zip files on the drive; then I hibernated. The first file was not corrupt (so the hibernation file must start after the beginning of the partition), but the other files were corrupt, the hibernation file is really at the place of the D: drive.

7) I created an E: drive starting on cylinder 1027 and copied the zip files there. They were not corrupted after hibernating. The hibernation files ends before the E: drive.

8) All the partition were made with Ibm disk manager loaded. You still need the ibm disk manager boot to recognize the C: partition even if it’s under 7977.6 MB.

9) It’s advised to make partition with at least 16K clusters, you lose some drive space but it’s faster and the defragmenting won’t take ages as well.

Good luck

Of course everything you do with your hard drive is at your own risk 8-) ...