NASLite Network Attached Storage

I use now the free version of NASLite. I have a crazy situation with one of my drives. I have to use an overlay because of something with the drive, I have tried all kinds of jumper settings and such.

It works now. With the overlay I can use the full capacity of the drive. I would like to purchase the + version, but if it will only boot from a cd, I may not be able to use it.

Would there be a way to make NASLite boot from a floppy, or add my overlay to the image before I commit it to a cd?

Thanks for any help, and thanks for putting out such an awsome program for free. Tony and Ralph, you guys rock.

Jeff

Hi Jeff,

A couple of things you could try, 1. a bios update, and 2. in the bios set the hard drives to none and let naslite take control of the HD's

Eden

Well, my server is running on an old compaq. The BIOS used to be store on a diagnostic partition on the hard drive.

I have fought for numerous hours with HP/Compaq trying to get a bios update or a softpak to get to the bios. Needless to say, they have not been much help.

The drive worked fine for a couple of years, then one day, it only shows 32gb, instead of 80gb. Now, no matter which computer it is in. it is only recognized as 32gb.

Maxtor's maxblast software shows the drive at it's correct size, and if I load the overlay first, anything else does too.

As it is right now, I have a boot floppy with the overlay on it, then when it states 'booting from floppy', I take that one out and put in my NASLite floppy and the server starts up like normal.

I know that is crazy, but it works for me.

Jeff

i'd like to look in to this, what is the model number of the Computer and Hard Drive.

Eden

Hello Jeff:

Those older Compaqs are indeed a pain in the rear. I have an AMD K6 (700MHz) from 2000. I have experienced similar problems with the larger HDDs and the BIOS not being updatable. Before I continue with more advice a question: You said "The BIOS used to be store on a diagnostic partition on the hard drive.". I assume the HDD has since been reformatted, and/or the diagnostic partition is otherwise no longer on the HDD. Question: Are you able to get into the BIOS when the system boots ? (Try F10, "Del", "Esc", "F2" etc.).

Once I hear back from you I'll try to help some more.

Georg

So something like this would sort it, providing the model number is correct.
http://h18007.www1.hp.com/support/files ... d/234.html

Edeng:
That is exactly what I am needing. When I used to support these POS computers, I had a link to a web site to download it from, but now I can't find one. From looking up different part numbers that I found in the system, I have decided that this is a Presario 4774. If you can find it you are god.

Georg:
Using F10 or anything does not work. You are correct. The hard drive was formatted a long time ago. I think you already know this, but on these older Compaq's, rather than putting an 'expensive' bios chip on the board, they decided to use a cheaper one that does who know what, while the important stuff sits on a 10-12Mb partition on the hard drive. When you hit F10, it loaded a GUI Bios configuration utility from the HDD.

I remember back when we used to work for them, you would have the customer download a softpaq, which when executed, created a bootable floppy disk (and maybe a second disk too) that you could boot straight to the BIOS utility.

Thanks for any help guys,

Jeff

http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/soft ... item=33291

try this!

Jeff:

Your Presario is even older than mine. In my case F10 gets me into BIOS without anything on the HDD, and changes I make are saved to CMOS. I don't know if changes made on your PC are saved only to the 10-12MB HDD area or also (or only) to CMOS on your motherboard. If the latter, good news. If not, things might get trickier.

I do not recommend the overlay scheme for NASLite+. Instead see Eden's recommended option 2 in his 12/8 09:20am post.

Start by changing BIOS settings to boot from first from CD-ROM, then Floppy. Also force the HDD to type=none. You may have to install the softpaq Eden found you in the previous post, and/or also use the following to get F10 to work again to make those changes: (
http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/softwareDownloadIndex?lc=en&lang=en&cc=us&os=19&dlc=en&product=92835&softwareitem=33817).

Once your PC is able to boot from CD-ROM you can use FDISK (or another low-level format utility) that destroys all information on the hard disk (in particular the overlay scheme).

Now you can test your free NASLite floppy to make sure it works WITHOUT overlay schemes. Make sure the full HDD capacity shows up properly. And if you are still successful booting from CD-ROM (test it with anything that boots (Knoppix, WinXP Setup, DiskDrive Installation CD, etc)), then NASLite+ should work for you later.

Report back your progress ...
Georg

Well I'll be damned!!

I couldn't get any of the setup or diagnostic disks to work. Kept saying that this computer is not supported by this disk....anyway

I tried the ROM update and it said that I already had the same version/date ROM. I let it update anyway. When it was finished, I ran the F10 update one to fix hard drive reporting.

Put the NASLite floppy in and BAM, I have an 80Gb disk now with no overlay.

I put the overlay onto a Win98 startup disk, instead of on the Hard drive directly, that way it would not mess with the linux partition.

Anyway, so now I am off to tell the wifey that I need to have NASLite+ for christmas.

Thanks for all your help guys,
Jeff


*Edit*
I am still curious about something though. It was my understanding that NASLite bypassed the BIOS and access the hard drives directly, eleminating the need fot updated bios and things like that. I am guessing that since I was unable to get into the bios and set it to NONE for hard drives, it kept IDing the drive before NASLite had a chance to load?

Oh well, it works now. Thanks again

Jeff:

Glad to hear of your success. I'll let Eden answer you final question about the BIOS ID'ing the HDD.

It sounds like you have more than one partition on the HDD. My guess is, the Linux partition is the first one. Apparently you are wanting to also boot Win98 at some point. I would caution you though, because even though you have the overlay only on the Win98SE startup floppy, I have had all sorts of strange experiences with those overlays. I suspect that when you boot from that floppy that there are some overlay programs that also change the MBR and partition info on the HDD. This could cause data corruption. I am not saying your overlay will do this ... just that I've had too much trouble over the years. My advice is to use that 80GB only with NASLite+ (single partition), otherwise (because of your old BIOS) booting to Win98 with overlay could cause trouble later. If you absolutely want to also boot Win98, do it from a second HDD not a second partition on the same HDD.

Good luck.

Georg

No, all of the drives in my NAS box are for only data storage. Each has only one partition.