Ontrack Disk Manager and Warp

Last Updated: July 14, 1995

Symptoms

Many users report problems and incompatibilities when installing Warp on an EIDE drive that uses Ontrack Disk Manager. Ontrack itself states that an 'Advanced Installation' using Boot Manager is not possible.

The following describes a successful installation of all three on a new drive, producing:

a primary partition formatted with FAT for DOS (120M),
an extended partition formatted with HPFS for OS/2 (500M), and
Boot Manager (plus some free space for future use).

Other configurations should be possible if you heed the caveats stated below.

Note: The following is really more long-winded than complicated. Much of this was learned trying to install DM; even more was learned later trying to remove it!

Hardware and Software

The software components used were:

Ontrack Disk Manager, v6.03, files dated 9/26/94
IBM1S506.ADD, file dated 2/13/95 (build date 950115)
OS2DASD.DMD, file dated 2/13/95
ONTRACK.FLT, file dated 12/2/94
OS/2 Warp v3.0 for users with DOS & Windows

The hardware used was:

Conner DS850A (850MB, newer model supporting PIO Mode 4)
486DX-33 with an ISA bus and generic IDE controller
AMI Bios dated 6/6/91

Problem

Disk Manager is a BIOS extension which is loaded from disk at boot-up and remaps the drive's cylinder and head geometry. As part of its remapping, it hides the real partition sector and itself (all on cylinder 0, side 0) and remaps side 1 to side 0. Side 1 has another partition sector which Disk Manager boots once it has finished loading. This is the sector OS/2 and DOS's FDISK programs use. An operating system which doesn't use or at least understand this scheme will have problems. The same is true for a user who doesn't let Disk Manager load before booting off a floppy.

To install Boot Manager and OS/2 successfully, I found I had to:

let the installation program 'do its thing',
leave the primary FAT partition it had created in place, and
install Boot Manager at the end of the disk's free space as a precaution.

I suspect that you can later reformat this partition for HPFS if you want to install OS/2 in a primary partition.

Worth Noting: DOS will only boot from the first primary FAT partition on the first disk and will not access other primary partitions on the same disk (FAT or otherwise). OS/2 will boot from either a primary or extended partition. Like DOS, it will ignore other primary partitions if it boots from a primary. For maximum flexibility, install OS/2 in an extended (logical) partition and reserve the primary partition(s) for DOS or other uses.

Procedure

In general, all of the (minimal) documentation is flawed, and the installation utility (DMOS2.EXE) makes things worse. Ignore the docs and make all changes manually, as described below.

Preliminaries

Obtain these files via FTP from 'ftp-os2.cdrom.com', 'software.watson.ibm.com', or other popular OS/2 FTP sites and unzip them:
1. ATAPI.ZIP, (contains IBM1S506.ADD and OS2DASD.DMD) ..or..
  WFP_05.ZIP (Warp FixPak5, which contains identical files with January dates)
2. ONTRAC.ZIP, (contains ONTRACK.FLT)
Make a copy of Installation Disk 1. All modifications described below will be made to this diskette, not to the original.
Delete TEDIT.HLP from the diskette. Copy or create a dummy file of less than 512 bytes and name it TEDIT.HLP. Our purpose here is to free up disk space while avoiding a fatal error later when the install program tries to copy this file and can't find it.
Edit the CONFIG.SYS on the diskette and make these changes:
1. on the line BASEDEV=IBM1S506.ADD, add /V. This parameter (/Verbose) is a confidence-building measure: during boot-up IBM1S506.ADD will display info on all your IDE adapters and drives, plus it will acknowledge that Ontrack DM is installed.
2. insert a line and add BASEDEV=ONTRACK.FLT
Copy these files to the diskette:
1. IBM1S506.ADD
2. OS2DASD.DMD
3. ONTRACK.FLT
The ATAPI.ZIP package also contains revised IDE CD-ROM drivers; follow the instructions in the package's README.TXT to install them later.

Installation

Before beginning, think long and hard about the size you want your first primary partition to be - you may be stuck with it permanently.

Ensure the CMOS settings for your new drive are correct
Boot DOS from a floppy
Run DM.EXE. When prompted, enter the partition size. It will also ask for your DOS system diskette so it can run the Format and Sys commands.
When complete, remove any floppies and reboot
Important: From now on, you can no longer boot from a floppy in the conventional fashion if you want Disk Manager to provide its services. You must remove all floppies, start the boot sequence, and wait for DM to prompt Press spacebar to boot from diskette. You have 2 seconds to press the spacebar; you can then insert the diskette at your leisure and press Enter when ready.
Insert the OS/2 Installation diskette, press Enter, and proceed as instructed; when offered the choice, select Advanced Installation
The next screen will propose drive C: as the installation partition. Select option 2 Specify a different drive or partition to run FDISK so you can install Boot Manager and optionally, create a new partition.
From Boot Manager's 'Options' menu, choose Install Boot Manager. When asked whether to place it at the beginning or end of the free space, choose End.
If you want to install OS/2 in a partition other than C:, select the line that lists the disk's Free Space and choose Create Partition. As noted above, the author suggests using a logical partition for several reasons - among them, the fact that it produces a successful installation.
The remainder of the installation should proceed without problems.

Post Installation

Because they are non-standard, the changes described above are not propagated to your new installation and must be manually reentered:

Copy ONTRACK.FLT to the directories \OS2\BOOT and \OS2\INSTALL\BOOTDISK.
Edit the CONFIG.SYS in the root directory and make these changes:
1. on the line BASEDEV=IBM1S506.ADD, add /V /A:0 /U:0 /LBA. This tells the system to use Logical Block Addressing for Adapter 0, Unit 0 (This assumes your new disk is the first drive on the primary IDE adapter, and that your drive is capable of LBA).
2. insert a line and add BASEDEV=ONTRACK.FLT
Copy TEDIT.HLP (the real one) from the Installation diskette (Disk 0) to the directory \OS2.
Breathe a sigh of relief that it all worked, and enjoy your speedy and capacious new hard drive (e-mail me if it didn't).

Notes

Most of the procedure above was tested as this was being written to ensure that my recollections agreed with reality. However, the steps from installing Boot Manager onward could not be. Nonetheless, recollection and comments in various Usenet postings suggest that the entire procedure as described is both complete and accurate.

Other miscellanea:

From what I can gather, HPFS (and NTFS) can handle large disks on their own without Disk Manager's help. If you don't plan on any FAT partitions, you may be able to skip it.
Some documents state that all bootable partitions must lie within the first 528MB. As the above demonstrates, this isn't necessarily the case if the partition starts below this limit. How the use of HPFS vs FAT affects this is unknown to me, as is the case of a partition that starts above 528MB.