1C0 LINE POSITION 02 ON HDD AND USB FLASH DRIVES

Help on how to use HxD.
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Henry B
Posts: 1
Joined: 31 Oct 2010 12:01

1C0 LINE POSITION 02 ON HDD AND USB FLASH DRIVES

Post by Henry B »

Hi all, please forgive me for being so amateurish on this. I have just downloaded HxD, the interface seems great. On a 80GB HDD I have 2 NTFS partitions. When formatting the new HDD initially under Windows XP (on a USB port in my laptop) I chose the Dynamic Disk option. I am trying to change position 02 on line 1C0 to change the dynamic disk to a basic disk (for DOS reasons), this was explained in a forum post. However, choosing the Physical Hard Disk 1 on the HxD > Extras > Open Disk menu I find position 02 returns 07 and not 42, and I am scared it is already a basic disk. I do not recall changing to Basic Disk (to 07) ever and I am a bit dumbfounded about all this. Have I definetely got a basic disk with the 07 byte ? Is position 02 on line 1C0 always fixed (with 07 or 42) or can the bytes be in a different line depending on the type of hard disk ? and are these positions also true for USB flash drives and can the positions be safely modified with 07 to appear as basic disks to the BIOS?
Many thanks for any help.

Henry B
Maël
Site Admin
Posts: 1455
Joined: 12 Mar 2005 14:15

Re: 1C0 LINE POSITION 02 ON HDD AND USB FLASH DRIVES

Post by Maël »

You can see if you have a dynamic or basic disk under windows disk management (I guess that's the name I have the German version of Windows). Start it by pressing the Windows start button and entering "diskmgmt.msc" in the text-field at the bottom left then hitting enter.

Regarding HxD. You can open a disk as a physical disk or a logical disk, depending on what was written in the tutorial (which obviously I haven't read) you might have opened the wrong one.

There is a program that is better suited for this kinds of tasks, try out testdisk.

And finally, your best bet would be to ask in the forum where people wrote this tutorial.
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