July 15, 1998
Do you have a shopping mall near you complete with a Babbages Software Store? Avoid it! Lurking behind the shrink wrap of a product I bought at Babbages was a greeting with the shocking news of a previous owner and a Master Boot Record Virus warning! Babbages re-packs pre-sold software and places it back on their shelves as new. My evidence is the old owner's name burned-in on the software disk I bought! Gee, thanks to that guy and thanks to Babbages, I spent over a day installing a new a 11.5 GB hard drive on my main system. Talk about a troubleshooting nightmare! Here's the story:
Why I bothered
I've earned a lot of T-shirts and jackets for all my beta test work. So I
have a dedicated computer just for testing -- I call this my "beta box."
With the arrival of a new beta program last Friday, I took a deep breath and decided to do
some drive juggling. I wanted to replace my main computer's 6.5 Gigabyte drive with an
11.5 Gigabyte monster and put the 6.5 Gigabyte drive on the beta box to replace an old 1.2
Gigabyte slave.
The best laid plans
My plan required that I buy three items. I expected the upgrade to take about 45
minutes of hardware disassembling and reassembling and an hour or two of unattended
copy-time as the software was transferred between the existing drive and the new
drive. I shopped around town and found that the Maxtor 11.5 Gigabyte drive was only
$50 more expensive at Sam's Club than the 8.4 Gigabyte drive. Furthermore, no other
store in town came close to matching this deal. The next closer deal was the 8.4
Gigabyte drive at Computer City for the same price as Sam's 11.5 Gigabyte drive.
However, Sam's didn't have the software I wanted.
After I got drive prepared, I planned to copy the contents from the source to the target drive. Keep in mind that a person may actually be able to simply boot to Windows 98 and copy the drive contents in this way via Explorer windows. You can't always depend upon this method, however. Sometimes things get messy due to many files reporting they are busy, in use, and sometimes you get file sharing violations. Finally, you can't do this reliably if you have multiple partitions on a drive. I didn't have any extra partitions on the drive, but I intended to start using partitions on the new drive.
As a result of wanting the new drive partitioned, I decided to use a software package that is said to simplify copying complexly partitioned disks. Initially, I planned to use Drive Copy 2.0 by PowerQuest Corporation to copy all the drive contents easily. Unfortunately, I couldn't find it in any of the five computer stores in town, so I got a copy of Quarterdeck's Disk Clone 1.01 (the latest build). It promised to be more feature packed that Drive Copy anyway. I found Disk Clone 1.01 at Computer City.
The final part of my plan involved the intended use of V Communication's System Commander Deluxe to partition some of that monster drive space. That program has a good reputation for allowing users to create unique partitions, or better still, hide them and boot to others. That allows you a clean way to juggle different Operating Systems (OSes) that might use a different type of File Allocation System (FAT). For instance, Windows NT4 needs FAT16 (or NTFS format) and my big drives use FAT32 under Windows 98. I could only find System Commander 4.0 at Babbages. Finally, with over $400 worth of hardware and software, I headed back to the office eager to begin.
Maxtor's 11.5 Gigabyte drive
For starters, I disassembled my case, put the 11.5 Gig drive on an available cable plug
and power cable, and then adjusted the jumpers as needed for the master/slave
routine. I rebooted my computer and ran the BIOS setup. I chose the AUTO hard
drive recognition option and checked that Logical Block Addressing (LBA) was
enabled. The BIOS setup (with my May 98 Phoenix BIOS) reported the Maxtor model
91152D8 drive by name and showed it to be 11.5 Gig in LBA mode.
After the drive was prepared in this way, everything seemed to be going according to plan. The instructions with the Maxtor drive warned that some OS environments and BIOS types older than January 1998 could fail to recognize the large drive. If you did not have a new enough BIOS or OS, Maxtor provided a software product that functioned like a disk partition overlay. This overlay would trick older machines into giving you access to the entire drive. However, Windows 95 SR2 and Windows 98 were expected to recognize the new drive without the disk overlay. Indeed, Fdisk-ing and formatting after booting to DOS [Windows 98 version 4.10.1998] went as smooth as could be.
As mentioned, the drive was 10.9 Gigabytes when formatted. Luckily, I could avoid any complications that could possibly arise in the future from the unnecessary use of the Maxtor software overlay. I went ahead and partitioned and formatted to 100% of the drive's physical capacity. I did this because I expected my reliable old Partition Magic 3.05 software could adjust the partition sizes and FAT types later even if the new software I had just purchased couldn't do that for some reason. By the way, that assumption about Partition Magic 3.05 turned out to be an incorrect assumption.
Disk Clone: Let's copy the files
The hard steps were completed (I thought) and the simple process of copying files was all
that remained. I booted from floppy and slipped in the Disk Clone 1.01
software. It has a very simple DOS interface: a box on the left for selecting the
source drive and a box on the right for specifying the target drive. You answer some
questions about overwriting your existing data, if any, and the copying begins.
As it turns out, Disk Clone 1.01 would have partitioned and formatted the drive for me. So it saw the existing formatting as data and prompted me about keeping it or overwriting it. I chose to keep my format. One worrisome aspect for me at that time was that Disk Clone 1.01 showed the maximum size of the partition it would copy to as 8.4 Gigs and not the 11.5 (or 10.9) that existed. Trustingly, I assumed and hoped this was just a reporting error and I continued. There was no way to select a number higher than 8.4 Gigabytes anyway.
It began copying.
I noticed, by the way, that that Disk Clone software has a reporting bug. When copying from any drive other than C: the status line in the software insists on reporting the path of the source files as C:\[pathname] even when that should be, say, D: instead. That gave me some pause, but realizing that Disk Clone 1.01 made reporting mistakes like that gave me a sort of confidence that the 8.4 Gigs it was showing was also just a sort of typo.
Whoops. It wasn't a typo at all. Disk Clone 1.01 repartitioned my 11.5 Gigabyte drive to 8.4. After the hour and a half of file transferring I discovered that 3 Gigabytes of space had vanished. Well, I figured, I was going to partition some of the drive with FAT 16 for the installation Windows NT4 anyway...so why not leave this 8.4 Gig partition alone. After all, all my files were now copied on it. I could change the cables and jumpers and reboot with it as my new drive C: and use Fdisk.exe to regain that other space. I made the hardware changes and rebooted.
Since Disk Clone 1.01 would not recognize or partition the remainder of the physical hard drive like Fdisk.exe had done, I just went ahead and used Fdisk.exe again. It reported the extended partition. I formatted it. The hard drive then had an 8.4 Gigabyte and a 2.9 Gigabyte partition on it. But I looked again with Disk Clone 1.01. Disk Clone 1.01 refused to make the right sense of the rest of my large hard drive even if it is Fdisk-ed and formatted correctly by another program! According to Norton Disk Doctor, Fdisk.exe, Format.com, and Windows 98, the drive had been fine at 11.5 Gigabytes and was still fine in two partitions of 8.4 Gigabytes and 2.9 Gigabytes respectively.
Lesson Learned
Disk Clone 1.01 alone disagreed. It refused to recognize the volume
beyond 8.4 Gigabytes. It can't handle a physical drive as big as 11.5 Gigabytes.
System Commander 4.0 & the Babbages legacy
But the worst news was yet to come and it came "bundled" with my
software purchased at Babbages. I purchased a shrink wrapped copy of System
Commander 4.0 off the shelf. I soon discovered that Babbages has a policy
of rewrapping returned items and placing them back on the shelf. I found this out
the hard way on my own. As soon at System Commander 4.0 installed itself
into the boot sector of my new hard drive, I rebooted and received the warning you see in
the screenshot below. As you can see from the slightly fuzzy image below (shot with
a digital camera), conventional memory failed the expected byte count and System
Commander 4.0 suspected a possible virus in the MBR, or Master Boot Record.
It should be mentioned here that I have never had a virus on my system. I have, in fact, been a beta tester for Symantec's antivirus products for many years and I often have more than one antivirus product running per day on my system.
I considered that the virus warning might be a false reading (I've seen such false reads when beta testing). I was only in a DOS environment at this time with System Commander 4.0, and since there was nothing I could easily do about any potential virus until I could run NAV under Windows 98, I continued to orient myself to the software by stepping through all of its menus. To my surprise, I found the information menu that is partially reproduced below. This was not new software!
As you can see, a previous user had burned his name, company, and phone number on the software (I've smudged the information in order to protect his privacy here)! Obviously, this previous owner had purchased, used, and returned the software to Babbages. Furthermore, Babbages had re-wrapped it and re-sold it as new. The most disgusting part of this Babbages' practice of reselling software is that, unlike most software, System Commander gets real intimate with your hard drive partition tables and boot records. A real virus at that level is very nasty.
The time was near 11:00 PM on Saturday night and Babbages was, of course, closed. I would have to wait until Sunday to get a refund. Anyway, System Commander 4.0 would not work to provide me a way to switch partitions on the large drive. Worse still, it reports that the new partition is overlapping the old partition. It suggests using Norton Disk Doctor to correct things. I gave that another try and again discovered that Norton Disk Doctor didn't think there was a problem at all.
Lesson Learned
System Commander 4.0 had some other guy's name and phone number burned
into it after I got it all installed in the boot sector of my hard drive - and it
suggested that I had a virus in the MBR in addition.
Final success
A new day began by returning the used copy of System Commander 4.0 to Babbages.
They saw the digital images shown here and gave me their apologies. (I can't help
but wonder who will be the next person to buy that same box after they shrink wrap it and
resell it again).
Back at the office, I had no choice but to re-Fdisk, use the command "FDISK /MBR" from my clean floppy to replace the Master Boot Record, repartition, reformat, and recopy my software to be safe (and to get the full capacity of the drive). After completing that and returning to Windows 98, NAV said there was no virus on either my hard drives or boot floppies.
My sure-fire method for making copies and, for that matter, tape backups is what I should have done in the first place. While this may seem like a bit of an "overkill," this is a pretty good method for a number of reasons. I'll tell you what it is first, then tell you why.
Since I have a huge drive, I made what would become a second copy of Windows 98 on the disk in a folder called W2. I installed it with the minimum installation and didn't bother with any updated drivers for modems, printers, video, sound, etc. The goal is to just get this (soon to be) second copy of Windows 95/98 on the system. All it has to do right is copy files in an Explorer window. Then you boot into it and you can copy all the long file names and drive contents with drag and drop ease.
Once the real copy of Windows 95/98 is on the hard drive, you have to change MSDOS.SYS's pointers from reading C:\W2 to C:\Windows. MSDOS.SYS is attributed as hidden, read only, and system. To accomplish the change you need only use the command "ATTRIB MSDOS.SYS -r -s -h" from DOS. Use the DOS EDIT program to carefully change the file as mentioned and then "ATTRIB MSDOS.SYS +r +s +h" again to protect the file. Also use EDIT to change the Autoexec.bat and Config.sys files where the paths might also be pointing to C:\W2. When you reboot, you will be in the original copy of Windows. In the case of this saga, the new drive will show up as seen below.
An important advantage of this strategy is that you can always reboot to the W2 version with the simple changes in MSDOS.SYS, Autoexec.bat, and Config.sys. Install your tape backup software in this copy of Windows. When you do, you can be sure of getting a hassle free copy or tape backup of all the "real" setup. More importantly, if disaster hits, you can restore from the W2 copy and easily produce the "good" version.
On several occasions I have begun a full restore by making this secondary copy of Windows with my tape software on a clean drive. This tactic is much quicker and more reliable than using, say, the Seagate's Backup Exec DOS emergency recovery method. The extra 30 minutes needed to put on the secondary copy of Windows still results in a time saving over the DOS emergency method and provides a better sense of control over your machine during the process.
Lesson Learned
Using this method I copied the 6.5 Gigabyte drive's contents to the larger, 10.9 Gigabyte
drive, change MSDOS.SYS, Autoexec.bat, and Config.sys to point to C:\Windows.
Voila! That took about 2 hours. Much of the time was unattended, too. But, as
a result of buying a drive so large that it tests the limit of most software and the
inconvenience of shopping at Babbages and getting out of date versions with potential
viruses, the entire ordeal took about 30 hours (including a little sleep time).
Ugh!
Conclusion
It would be convenient to summarize what I discovered about each software
package.
Should you buy and mess around with the larger Maxtor model 91152D8 drive at this point in time? Sure. It operates at a fast 9.0 millisecond access time and promises transfer rates as high as 33.0 Megabytes per second. (Of course, those speeds are probably only seen by oscilloscopes on a testing bench). But, nevertheless, in the real world, this is a fast drive. It has a 3 year warranty and 48-hour replacement service. If you have a newer machine, Windows 95 SR2 or Windows 98 will recognize its size. If you have an older machine, you can use the included software from Maxtor to enable its capability in your system.
Should you also get a copy of Disk Clone 1.01? No. Even this latest version will not support drives over 8.4 Gigabytes. This is important. The failure to support the drive is not solved by having smaller partitions on a 11.5 Gigabyte drive. Disk Clone 1.01 will not properly see the 11.5 Gigabyte physical drive regardless of the partition sizes at this point. The obvious conclusion is that Disk Clone 1.01 was a waste of money if you have a physical hard drive larger than 8.4 Gigabytes.
Should you just get a copy of System Commander (from a store other than Babbages) and proceed? Well, yes, that would be okay. But, note the following:
System Commander 4.0 is not the latest build and it only recognized a drive of 8.4 Gigabytes or smaller too. If you have a larger drive, you need to go to the V Communications, Inc. web site and download a patch to upgrade it to version 4.01 (or buy a new copy of System Commander 4.01 from the company). Version 4.01 will work with hard drives larger than 8.4 Gigabytes with no trouble at all. Since the patch is a recent addition, you may not find it in a store or even a mail order company at this time. But the patch and the product are available on the World Wide Web, right here.
I mentioned PowerQuest's Partition Magic 3.05 (the latest build). Although, I didn't mention it, it played a minor role in my saga. It will recognize the 10.9 Gigabyte size but it will not allow any changes to the drive in any way. In fact, it erroneously reported that the drive was full and it failed to see the remaining 6 Gigabytes of free space.
I also mentioned PowerQuest Corporation's Drive Copy 2.0 (the latest build) but was unable to purchase it locally. I don't know if this has the same limitations as Disk Clone, so don't take my mentioning it as an endorsement. I have no data to support it and no data to question it, either. It remains to be tested in this environment.
Will I go back to Babbages to buy software? No way! This article is about inconvenience - and it's mostly about the added aggravation and danger due to shopping at Babbages. I was told that Babbages and their sister store -- Software, Etc. -- have a policy of re-selling returned software "as long as it appears to be re-sellable." Since they have a willingness to rewrap returned items and place them back on the shelf for sale, I strongly urge readers to avoid buying software from Babbages or Software, Etc. Considering the possibility of virus infection from such practices, shopping at Babbages is a bit like having unprotected and unsafe sexual relations.
You could run an antivirus check on your new software before installing it (probably a good idea in any event), but you need to be willing to make another round trip to Babbages to return the software if there is a problem. Who needs the gamble and who has the time? There is simply no excuse for taking chances like that when any number of other software outlets are available.
You should also get in the habit of always asking stores or mail order companies where you buy computer goods if they sell "re-packed software." If the answer is "yes" or if there is a pause or a stammer, you'll know you must be extra wary!
They'll be more careful by default since you had the smarts to ask the question about re-packing. If you're stuck for time and need to get the software that day in that store -- ask them to find you a brand new piece of that software still in the original shippers box.
Then you should open the product right there in front of them to see if the warranty card is intact or if any materials or manuals are missing. You won't be able to see if the software has been registered on the disk, but at least you'll be able to check for the obvious, telltale, signs of re-packed software.
Asking about re-packed software up front is at least one small way to better protect yourself from unspoken store policies that may be lurking behind your next software purchase.
Copyright © 1998 by Stephen Lankton
"Go Inside" is a David Boles Trademark