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>> Why don't you try formatting the first partition after 1024 or 2048 bytes
>> from the beginning?
>> In theory it is possible to do so. It's just an experiment, but maybe it
>> works.

>I can shrink it with PQMagic but what do you think this will accomplish?
>I have walled off bad areas on other drives, but I think only the zero
>track is the problem here.

Shrinking only affects the last sectors, not the frst ones.

>> What really slows down is if one of the HDs is capable of LBA and the
other
>> doesn't (very old HDs).
>> Or in case of other differences like this.

>What size is not capable of LBA?

The old and small ones under 512mb.
A very few HDs of a higher capacity are not capable of  logical block
accessing.
I still have HDs of 64, 131, 165, 270 and 428mb. The most of them do not
boot anymore.
Some of these are recognized by IBM 486 as being "high performance" HDs and
it's a bit hard to mix them.
Other PCs say these same are "low performance" ones.
I own another one which was nominally 1.2Gb and that arrived to me with many
bad sectors, and a missing power conector. It had no tags and all the
waranty labels were removed.
I had to shrink it down to 860mb and even use some epoxi in order to have
the connector fixed.
It was capable of  LBA, but if set so, it simply doesn't work.

>>
>>> My 100GB won't work as slave.  At least not on IDE0.
>>
>>> The drive was given to me as secondary slave (with XP booting from
primary
>>> slave - the jumpers were all mixed up, one as CS, one on some jumper
that
>>> was not even listed.)
>>
>> A 100GB HD is not set to "slave" without a good reason.
>> Maybe it was defective a long time before the donation, and that was an
>> effort to avoid discarding it.

>It also had no files on it.  The owner was having some troubles with
>software and he had plugged a few other things together wrong.  (USB was
>plugged into Com2...)

Well, it's a good challenge.
Let's work and wait for a victory.

>>
>>>> This way it's supposed not to slow down the CD neither the HDs.
>>> I will live with a floppy disk boot for a while and then maybe try this
as
>>> hdc with a different hda that boots.  I don't know if the CD would slow
>>> down the hard drive.
>>
>> CDs have a hibrid structure (IDE / SCSI) and this way they can slow down
a
>> high performance HD installed on the same IDE cable.

>I will not mix them then.  I can boot from floppy disk.

Good.

>Broken equipment is more educational

I agree. And the problems help us to improve.

>Sindi

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