Best Partition Program?

[Rikkelz]

Hey All!

I'd like to partition my 80Gb HDD that has a DDO(Dynamic Drive Overlay) I have tried Partition Magic but it just keeps giving errors and Acronis OS Selector SE and that just wont let me try. Do you know any programs that will partition a DDO drive?

Thanks a stack,

Rikkelz

[duffy90210]

I am not aware of one that will handle DDO, as it work with the disk in a non-standard way, you will most likely need to find another HDD and copy the data off and then kill the disk and start again.

HTH

[Rikkelz]

I have to use the DDO because I have award bios v.4.51, the HDD is still new. I just want to partition it to install windows XP.
Any Ideas?

Rikkelz

[Nuttapper]

Hi M8, no answers really just curious questions, I hadn't heard of DDO before now, but a quick look on google told me this:

Ifyou cannot spend funds on a hardware solution (or simply don't want to for whatever reason) then your alternative to allow access to the full capacity of your hard disk is the use of a software translation driver, also called a dynamic drive overlay or DDO. These usually go by names like Disk Manager, EZ-Drive and the like. The idea behind one of these programs is pretty simple: they override in software some of the BIOS code in your motherboard or hard disk controller, allowing access to the full size of a new hard disk on an older system. The software must be loaded immediately when the machine is booted, to ensure that the driver is in place before any other piece of software tries to access the disk. Otherwise, the disk will not work properly. To ensure that they are always loaded immediately at boot time, the installer for this sort of program modifies the boot disk's master boot record (http://www.storagereview.com/guide2000/ref/hdd/file/structMBR.html) and installs the driver at the beginning of the disk.

May be because the Bios has been altered the PM solution doesn't work

why do you need this? and what is the significance of the award bios?

As I say Im just curious, Cheers for any info

[duffy90210]

Nuttapper
What DDO does is to load a kinda device driver before the disk can be access, so in effect, its a partition manager in its own right, if you try to use Partition Magic or alike to work with the disk, it will not see it as it is trying to access the raw partition layer of the disk when its already being taken over by DDO.

DDO are used most commonly with older computers that cant see larger hard drives due to BIOS limitation, but sadly, once installed, theres no easy way to resize or remove it without losing the data.

HTH

[Nuttapper]

Thanks for that Duffy90210, every days a school day :)