Migrating to QNX4.25C from QNX4.24 installed on drive >8G

We have clients running QNX4.24 who need to upgrade their hardware to a system
with a drive that is greater than 8 gig. On the most part, their current space
needs is no larger than 3 gig but as you know the eide driver for 4.24 does not
recognize drives larger than 8G. We plan to upgrade the OS when they upgrade
their product but we are concerned that the Fsys will not be corrupted with the
upgrade. The problem lies with clients who need the extra drive space over 8G.

Our plan is to partition the first 3 - 8 gig of the new drive as 77 then use our
script to copy all the files to the new drive. We are hoping that once 4.25C is
installed (with the new eide driver) that it will recognize the rest of the
drive and we can then format the remainder of the drive and mount it as part of
the file system.

Our expectation in this remedy is that the 4.24 eide driver recognizes the first
1024 cylinders of the drive but ignores the cylinders above that. The problem
is that we do not know.

  • Has the whole drive been mapped but is considered to be mapping only 1024
    cylinders?
  • Has the extra cylinders not been mapped and are just out of range?
  • If the drive is formatted as the whole disk, would this through out the
    mapping and would it be just a simple matter of running chkfsys?

In the end, do we run the risk of loosing data? Would we be advised to upgrade
the OS before moving the data to these drives?

Thanks

Douglas M. Barker (800) 387-4876 (toll free)
Software Support Engineer (519) 888-9304 (voice)
PC Automation Inc. (519) 888-9085 (fax)
925 Erb St. W., Waterloo email: support@pcauto.com
Ontario, Canada, N2J 3Z4

We have had a chance to test this internally. The old drivers write to the
first 1024 cylinders and ignore the rest. There is no problem with upgrading.

thanks

Douglas M. Barker (800) 387-4876 (toll free)
Software Support Engineer (519) 888-9304 (voice)
PC Automation Inc. (519) 888-9085 (fax)
925 Erb St. W., Waterloo email: support@pcauto.com
Ontario, Canada, N2J 3Z4


Douglas Barker wrote:

We have clients running QNX4.24 who need to upgrade their hardware to a system
with a drive that is greater than 8 gig. On the most part, their current space
needs is no larger than 3 gig but as you know the eide driver for 4.24 does not
recognize drives larger than 8G. We plan to upgrade the OS when they upgrade
their product but we are concerned that the Fsys will not be corrupted with the
upgrade. The problem lies with clients who need the extra drive space over 8G.

Our plan is to partition the first 3 - 8 gig of the new drive as 77 then use our
script to copy all the files to the new drive. We are hoping that once 4.25C is
installed (with the new eide driver) that it will recognize the rest of the
drive and we can then format the remainder of the drive and mount it as part of
the file system.

Our expectation in this remedy is that the 4.24 eide driver recognizes the first
1024 cylinders of the drive but ignores the cylinders above that. The problem
is that we do not know.

  • Has the whole drive been mapped but is considered to be mapping only 1024
    cylinders?
  • Has the extra cylinders not been mapped and are just out of range?
  • If the drive is formatted as the whole disk, would this through out the
    mapping and would it be just a simple matter of running chkfsys?

In the end, do we run the risk of loosing data? Would we be advised to upgrade
the OS before moving the data to these drives?

Thanks

Douglas M. Barker (800) 387-4876 (toll free)
Software Support Engineer (519) 888-9304 (voice)
PC Automation Inc. (519) 888-9085 (fax)
925 Erb St. W., Waterloo email: > support@pcauto.com
Ontario, Canada, N2J 3Z4