Plus Passport Hard Drive Appears As Two Drives to FDISK (76977)



The information in this article applies to:

  • Microsoft MS-DOS operating system 5.0

This article was previously published under Q76977

SUMMARY

The Plus Development Passport hard drive will appear as two physical hard drives when partitioned with the MS-DOS 5.0 FDISK command. However, you can use the entire drive as one partition under Microsoft MS-DOS version 5.0.

MORE INFORMATION

The 40 MB Passport removable hard drive was developed before MS-DOS allowed for an extended DOS partition. At that time, users were limited to one 32 MB primary DOS partition and the Passport hard drive was incompatible with drivers such as Disk Manager. To allow you to use the entire 40 MB available on your drive, the Passport has the ability to appear as two physical drives. The drive controller then provides the translation.

According to Plus Development technical support, the MS-DOS 5.0 FDISK command can create a 40 MB primary DOS partition on the first of the two physical drives reported by the Passport controller. The second drive will then appear as a disk of size 0. Note that FDISK will still report the extra physical drive; this is perfectly normal and has no ill effects.

If you have a second drive of size 0, you can use the /1 switch on your Passport driver to eliminate the second drive. For more information on the /1 switch, contact Plus Development technical support.

The product included here is manufactured by vendors independent of Microsoft; we make no warranty, implied or otherwise, regarding this product's performance or reliability.

Modification Type:MajorLast Reviewed:11/26/1999
Keywords:KB76977