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Topic: Pendrive geometry, Changing geometry parameters on a pendri

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cbagger01

Group: Members
Posts: 4264
Joined: Oct. 2003

Posted: Jan. 06 2005,04:13

DSL is normally booted up with syslinux or isolinux to allow entry of custom boottime parameters.

So having a USB boot system that uses the same tools allows people to boot up via USB device using the same methods that they are already used to with the livecd.

brad
Unregistered

Posted: Jan. 07 2005,08:47

hmk, maybe that's the reason I can't get my stick booting..
how comes that I get an odd number of sectors when using the formular "total_sectors / 32 / number_of_heads = no_of_cylinders" ?

Bytes: 262144000
Total Sectors: 262144000 bytes / 512 = 512000 sectors
Cylinders: 512000 sectors / 32 / 9 heads = 1777,77778

Or is there a mistake anywhere?

I was following a guid which told me to do a "sfdisk -S 32 /dev/sda" and then setting the partitions. Could that cause any trouble?

Your help is greatly appriciated!

Below the output of fdisk and sfdisk:

sfdisk output
-------------
Disk /dev/sda: 1777 cylinders, 9 heads, 32 sectors/track
Units = cylinders of 147456 bytes, blocks of 1024 bytes, counting from 0

Device Boot Start End #cyls #blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 * 0+ 539 540- 77759+ 6 FAT16
/dev/sda2 540 1776 1237 178128 6 FAT16
/dev/sda3 0 - 0 0 0 Empty
/dev/sda4 0 - 0 0 0 Empty

fdisk output
------------
Disk /dev/sda: 262 MB, 262144000 bytes
9 heads, 32 sectors/track, 1777 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 288 * 512 = 147456 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 * 1 540 77759+ 6 FAT16
/dev/sda2 541 1777 178128 6 FAT16

Bytes: 262144000
Total Sectors: 262144000 bytes / 512 = 512000 sectors
Cylinders: 512000 sectors / 32 / 9 heads = 1777,77778

phraque

Group: Members
Posts: 1
Joined: Jan. 2005

Posted: Jan. 07 2005,12:58

(brad)

Also Im getting the message "Total number of sectors not a multiple of sectors per track" which is not correct:
512000 / 32 = 16000

--------------
Real programmers don't document. If it was hard to write, it should be hard to understand.

cbagger01

Group: Members
Posts: 4264
Joined: Oct. 2003

Posted: Jan. 07 2005,18:35

Try formatting your drive with the Dellll bootable USB key utility program for MSWindows:

http://www.bay-wolf.com/utility/usb_memkey.zip

Then test and make sure that the usb key will boot.

If so, then boot into DSL and overwrite the key with the Install to pendrive function.

The Dell utility should create a partition with the correct geometry. Then you can use the newly created partition for a bootable linux.

tbaleno

Group: Members
Posts: 2
Joined: Aug. 2005

Posted: Aug. 27 2005,15:27

My math isn't so good, could someone give me the correct geometry if mine is showing 133674 cylinders, 255 heads, 63 sectors/track? Its a san disk 4GB cruzer mini pendrive but fdisk and others seem to show 1000GB.

10 replies since Dec. 31 2004,18:53

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