Hard Disk ToolKitPE v2.0.1 Release Notes
Copyright 1991-1996 FWB Software, LLC
10/02/96


NOTICE:
The enclosed software is an OEM version of Hard Disk ToolKitPE. This software package may only be purchased as part of a storage sub-system or computer system. If you purchased this software package separately, please return it to the place of purchase for a refund. Technical support for this software is only available from the company that bundled the package with your storage device or computer system. Please contact this company for technical support.

FWB currently offers a support package that allows recipients of bundled software to receive FWB's top-rated technical support and FWB's latest version for a $29 registration fee. Please contact FWB for further information.

Additional features/notes of Hard Disk ToolKitPE not mentioned in the Hard Disk ToolKitPE User Guide.

Note: IDE is also referred to as ATA.

Hard Disk ToolKitPE Installer

 The Installer application, HDTPE 2.0.1 Installer, installs the applications, control panels and system extensions of Hard Disk ToolKitPE. It will not install hard disk drivers.

 Hard Disk ToolKitPE, FWB Crisis Tool, FWB Mounter, and FWB IDE Extension explicitly support IDE drives. The other components of Hard Disk ToolKitPE do not.

 Before the Installer installs any of Hard Disk ToolKitPE 2.0.1's applications and extensions, the old 1.x extensions, preferences, and control panel items will be moved into a folder called Disabled FWB Items. This folder will reside in the System Folder of the startup drive.

 When you install FWB ToolsPE (either by Easy Install or Custom Install), any copy of FWB Tools (from Hard Disk ToolKit 2.x or RAID ToolKit 1.9 or later) will be removed.

 If this copy of Hard Disk ToolKitPE is on a CD-ROM disk instead of floppy diskettes, you will not have a HDTPE Crisis Boot Disk in your package. The CD-ROM disk itself can be used to start up your computer system.


Where have the FWB (Hammer) Logos Gone?

We've made minor changes to the interface in this version to reflect FWB Softwares new logo and corporate identity. Specifically, we've updated all instances of the "crossed hammer" icon with the new FWB Software, LLC logo.


Hard Disk ToolKitPE

 If it appears that you have plenty of free space on your disk, but installing or updating a driver fails, defragment your disk and try the operation again. If this fails, you may need to back up your data and reinitialize your disk to install the latest FWB driver. Also see the next item.

 Norton Filesaver makes an invisible file near the end of the partition. If there is data near the end of the HFS partition, we cannot shrink it, which may be necessary for driver updating. Here are the steps to work around this problem:

1.  Turn off Norton Filesaver at minimum for the volume whose driver you are updating.
2.  Run a disk optimizer, like Norton Speed Disk or TurboDisk (part of FWB Turbo ToolKit).
3.  In your disk optimizer, turn on the option to erase unused space.
4.  Optimize the disk.
5.  Try to update the driver with Hard Disk ToolKitPE again.

The above steps usually work. A file was probably in the way.

 If you define custom settings for your disk driver (such as blind transfers or verification after writes), when you update to the latest FWB driver, the settings are reset to the default for that drive. This ensures the highest degree of safety for all supported drives, which use the thoroughly tested optimal settings contained in the Device Data and Device Data ATA files. Please note the settings before updating the driver and reset them to your custom settings after updating the driver.

 If you are using System 7.5.2 or later and a volume fails to initialize, please note that Apples disk initialization routine has recently changed. Although it's faster, it requires more free memory to perform the operation under System 7.5.2 or later. If an attempt to initialize fails, try again after freeing up more RAM by quitting all applications and restarting Hard Disk ToolKitPE, or by restarting the system with extensions off (by holding down the Shift key during startup).

 When performing write-enabled media scanning, Hard Disk ToolKitPE prevents you from switching to other applications. This is to minimize the risk of data loss if a disk error occurs during a write operation.

 If a CD-ROM changer or jukebox is connected to the system when Hard Disk ToolKitPE is launched, the main window may take longer to appear. If there are CDs loaded in the changer or jukebox, the startup screen may remain displayed for up to 15 minutes while Hard Disk ToolKitPE scans for detailed information on all attached SCSI LUNs. With fewer CDs loaded in the changer or jukebox, the Hard Disk ToolKitPE main display window may appear sooner.

 Hard Disk ToolKitPE will install an IDE driver and a SCSI driver on all removable media and all IDE drives. Dual drivers allow you to interchange removable media between IDE and SCSI removable drives and to use IDE-configured laptops in SCSI Disk Mode.

NOTE: If you use a Macintosh PowerBook with an IDE drive (such as a Macintosh PowerBook 190 or 5300), and you partition the drive into multiple volumes, then the Macintosh PowerBook cannot be put in SCSI disk mode when using the Hard Disk ToolKitPE driver. There is no problem if the drive contains just a single volume.

 Hard Disk ToolKitPE 2.0.1 can create custom partitions for use with MkLinux. Format the drive. When the Create Volumes dialog appears click "Cancel". Manually create the following partitions:

    Volume Type: Apple_HFS, Name: "MacOS HFS Boot partition" - At least 50 MB
    Volume Type: Scratch, Name: "root", Type: "Apple_UNIX_SVR2" - At least 100 MB
    Volume Type: Scratch, Name: "usr", Type: "Apple_UNIX_SVR2" - At least 200 MB
    Volume Type: Scratch, Name: "swap", Type: "Apple_UNIX_SVR2" - 64 MB

 A generic document icon may appear on your Desktop instead of the colorful disk icon after successful autoinitialization of your device. This is a problem seen on early System 7 versions and is fixed on System 7.5.3 and later. Please see "How to Use Cool FWB Icons" for step-by-step instructions on how to replace the generic document icon with one of our colorful Desktop icons.

 If you are using a Power Macintosh without the ObjectSupportLib file installed, drag-and-drop is not supported.

 The password dialog box will still come up at boot time on a secured volume (password only) even if its automount option is disabled. Hit "Enter" to continue without mounting the volume.


IDE Driver

 The installed IDE driver is configured automatically for optimum performance for a given IDE hard drive. However, the IDE driver will be configured conservatively to work reliably on unsupported IDE hard drives. You can manually tune the IDE driver by using the "Configure Driver" feature in Hard Disk ToolKitPE; you can greatly improve IDE drive performance by enabling the write cache.

Beware that some drives do not behave correctly at some of the more sophisticated settings, so back up your data before experimenting.


FWB IDE Extension

 FWB IDE Extension should be installed only on a PowerBook 5300 laptop that is configured with removable media drives.

 Removable cartridges that do not contain an IDE driver must not be inserted in removable drives when the machine is starting up or else they will not be mounted. Please insert cartridges after the Desktop appears. This applies to cartridges, not canisters.

 On PowerBook 5300s: If installed, the FWB IDE driver will load at startup, even if the computer was started without a cartridge in the IDE drive.


FWB Crisis Tool

 The driver that FWB Crisis Tool installs is configured conservatively to enable it to work with almost all hard drives. Use the "Configure Driver" feature of the main application to fine tune the driver configuration for better drive performance.


PC Card (PCMCIA)

 PC Card (PCMCIA) devices on PowerBooks (PB190 and PB5300) are not explicitly supported in this release. However, Hard Disk ToolKitPE does not prevent you from setting up and installing an IDE driver on a PC Card device. Proceed at your own risk.

 Under limited testing, we have had some success with the SyQuest SQ-1080. A system can be installed. Put Away or Cmd-Y ejects the PC Card device. Holding down the option key while dragging the Desktop drive icon to the Trash ejects both the PC Card device and the removable media. Again, we do not claim support for PC Card devices on this release, so proceed at your own risk.


Miscellaneous Compatibility Issues

 If you are using System 7.5.x, we recommend that you update to the latest Macintosh System (version 7.5.5) available on many online services and directly from Apple. Refer to Apple's System Update Overview and Installation documentation for additional information.

 Mounting devices in FWB Mounter and FWB Crisis Tool: When in Device view, you can only mount volumes that would normally mount at startup. If a particular volume doesn't mount when you select a device in Device view and click the Mount button, you must switch to Volume view, and mount the volume from there.

If the device is controlled by a Hard Disk ToolKitPE 2.0.1 driver, you can activate the volume's Automount option using the Change Volume Attributes command in the Devices menu in the main Hard Disk ToolKitPE application. Click the Automount checkbox to enable this option (enabled means the checkbox has a check in it). 

 For maximum performance and compatibility, owners of FWBs NuBus SCSI JackHammer should update all devices on the JackHammer bus with Hard Disk ToolKitPE 2.0.1's driver. Some third-party drivers erroneously reduce the amount of System heap space available for drivers and extensions. This can prevent Hard Disk ToolKitPE from loading any additional devices on the bus. Simply update all devices on the system with the Hard Disk ToolKitPE driver to avoid this problem.

 Most disk diagnostic and repair utilities currently available do not properly recognize volumes that have capacities larger than 4 GB or allocation block sizes larger than 63.5 KB. Some utilities may erroneously report such volumes as having numerous serious problems with their master directory block, extents, and directory contents. Norton Utilities 3.2.1 or later has been updated to handle large volumes.

 Contrary to the System 7.5.3 release notes, the original models of Power Macintoshes (6100/7100/8100) do not support volumes larger than 4 GB under System 7.5.3. To determine the largest volume supported by your current combination of Mac OS System Software and Mac OS-compatible hardware, run either the main Hard Disk ToolKitPE application or FWB Mounter, open About Hard Disk ToolKitPE (or "About FWB Mounter") under the Apple menu, and select the Info (or "System Info") button.

 The Sync-Cache option in Driver Configure is primarily intended for use on devices that are connected to the fast internal bus of the PCI Macintosh. Some users report sporadic data corruption during shutdown on these machines due to incomplete flushing of the write cache. Some older devices do not support the Sync-Cache option. If it defaults to on (box is checked), the drive supports it. If the box is not checked for a device, turn on this option at your own risk.

 You should not use older versions of RAID ToolKit, Hard Disk ToolKit, or Hard Disk ToolKitPE to modify 2.0 on newer formatted drives.

 Early models of the Fujitsu IDE DynaMO drive (model M2541B) are incompatible with the PowerBook 190.

 IDE-configured models of Macintoshes create and support a type of HFS disk configuration that has no disk partition map structure; it contains one large HFS volume. Hard Disk ToolKitPE does not explicitly support such a disk configuration but it will allow you to reconfigure the disk to a standard configuration.

 In some situations, removable media with a pre-Hard Disk ToolKitPE 2.0.1 or a non-FWB driver may not eject when you drag all its volumes to the Trash. If you turn on the drive that contains the media after your computer starts up or if you insert the media after the computer starts up and you mount one or more volumes on the media with Hard Disk ToolKitPE 2.0.1 or FWB ToolsPE, then the media may not eject when you drag its last volume to the Trash. To fix the situation, update the driver on the media to Hard Disk ToolKitPE 2.0.1 or later.

 Inside Macintosh IV-style partitions (circa 1986) are not supported by Hard Disk ToolKitPE 2.0.1. Removable cartridges partitioned in this style will not mount. Hard drives and removable cartridges cannot be updated to Inside Macintosh: Devices format (a.k.a. Inside Macintosh V-style) by Update Driver. Please backup and re-initialize hard drives and removable cartridges to bring them into a modern format.






FWB Software, LLC
185 Constitution Drive, Suite A
Menlo Park, California, USA 94025-1439

Internet
    URL: http://www.fwb.com
    General Information: info@fwb.com
    Technical Support Inquiries: support@fwb.com
    Sales Inquiries: sales@fwb.com
    Upgrade Inquiries: upgrade@fwb.com
