Welcome to FIPS
	The First nondestructive Interactive Partition Splitting program

				Version 1.5
			      august 22, 1995

		     Copyright 1993-95 by Arno Schaefer


0.  What you need to use FIPS
1.  Introduction
2.  What FIPS does
3.  Safety
4.  Restrictions
5.  Before you start
6.  Use with a multitasking OS
7.  Using FIPS
8.  After splitting the partition
9.  Commandline Switches
10. Troubleshooting
11. Credits


In file SPECIAL.DOC:

S1. Use with Stacker/SuperStor/Doublespace etc.
S2. Use with OS/2
S3. Use with OnTrack Disk Manager and similar drivers


FIPS is a program designed to split an existing DOS partition without deleting
the data on it.

FIPS is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify
it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
the Free Software Foundation; either version 2, or (at your option)
any later version.

FIPS is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the
GNU General Public License for more details.

You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
along with FIPS; see the file COPYING.  If not, write to
the Free Software Foundation, 675 Mass Ave, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA.

Report problems and direct all questions to:

    schaefer@rbg.informatik.th-darmstadt.de


0. What you need to use FIPS

You need a defragmentation program in order to move all data to the beginning
of the hard disk. FIPS will only split your partition if you have enough free
space at the end. DOS 6.0 and later contains DEFRAG, which is suitable for
this purpose. Other suitable programs are Norton Speedisk (actually DEFRAG
is speedisk with less functions, licensed from Norton), PCTools' Compress,
DISKOPT in Novell DOS 7, or the shareware programs ORG, DOG or SAFPAK
(available by anonymous FTP from any SimTel mirror in the diskutil directory).
I did not test these however, so don't blame me if they don't work for you.

You may also want to use a program like Norton Disk Doctor (or 'scandisk'
in DOS 6.2) to check your harddisk before and after using FIPS.

FIPS was developed under DOS 5.0. It should work fine with anything above
3.0, perhaps even with 2.0. However it will not be of much use with older
DOS versions, since the large partition sizes are only available since DOS 4.
It has been reported to work with DOS 6.0 and 6.2 and Novell DOS 7. I have
also received reports about successful use with Windows95 partitions. Note
that the long filenames are no problem for FIPS, because it works on a
lower level where directory structure is of no concern. It is probably
sensible to boot from a DOS disk before using FIPS in such a setup (see 6.)



1. Introduction

The program was inspired by the Linux Project. When installing Linux on a
PC that was used for DOS / Windows, many people want to retain a smaller
partition for their DOS software. However, since most Harddisks contain
only one large partition, you would normally be required to do a complete
backup, erase the partition and build two (or more) new partitions. Then you
would restore the backup to one of the new partitions. On today's systems
with hard disk capacities of usually 500MB or more, a complete backup becomes
practically infeasible without large media like streamer tapes once the
drive has filled up to some considerable fraction. Even though many people
backup their most valuable date (a practice which I would highly recommend
in any case), the process of reinstalling all the software packages takes
many hours or even days.

FIPS was written to remedy this problem. You can now split a partition
without losing any data, provided there is enough free space for the new
partition at the end of the old one.


2. What FIPS does

FIPS reduces the size of a partition by changing some values in the
partition table and boot sector. It does not change the formatting of
the partition, especially not the cluster size and the size of the file
allocation table (FAT). Therefore the reduced partition will have a FAT
that is in part unused, but this is not a problem for DOS.

From the free space that is won by this, FIPS creates a new _primary_ DOS
partition.

If you want to use the new partition under a different OS (e.g. Linux), use
its supplied fdisk program to make any necessary changes (refer to the OS
manuals).

If you want to use the new partition under DOS/Windows, you can use it as
it is (after formatting!), but be aware of the following:

According to the official references, DOS can only have one primary
partition. All DOS versions (at least from v5.0 on) will happily work with
multiple primary partitions, but this is an 'undocumented feature'. If
you want to follow the official rules, you can delete the new partition with
fdisk and create an extended partition in its place.

There are reasons for having multiple primary partitions, among them the
possibility to boot from different partitions by changing the active par-
tition with fdisk.

Known problems with multiple primary partitions are:

- If you accidentally delete one primary partition with fdisk, you can not
  easily recreate it, since fdisk will refuse to. There may be other fdisk
  programs around that work, and if all else fails you can boot from a
  Linux boot disk to run Linux' fdisk, but it is always a hassle.

- There exist some software packages that work with the partition table and
  which may be confused by multiple primary partitions. Among them was SFS,
  the 'Secure file system' by Peter Gutmann. I think Peter has made a change
  to his program to accept some unusual configuration, but there may exist
  other software packages that will have problems.


3. Safety

FIPS was specifically designed to provide a maximum of safety. On startup
it checks the Partition Table, Boot Sector and FAT for any inconsistencies.
If it finds anything suspicious, it will tell you so. If there are errors,
FIPS will not proceed.
You have the possibility to write backup copies of your root and boot sector
to a floppy disk before proceeding. If something goes wrong, you may restore
these with the program 'restorrb.exe' (see section 5). I strongly recommend
making use of this feature. It will also enable you to reverse the partition
split afterwards, so it might be a good idea to save the root/boot sector
image in a safe place.
FIPS checks for free space on the partition and will let you choose the
new start cylinder accordingly.
After having calculated the new partition table and boot sector, FIPS will
check everything again, so that possible bugs in the calculation may be
detected. Only if everything is ok, FIPS will ask for permission to write
the new root and boot sector.


4. Restrictions

FIPS will only work with Hard Disk BIOSes that use interrupt 13h for low
level harddisk access. This is true for almost all PCs. I have received
a report that an older Adaptec SCSI controller had a software driver
that worked on a higher level. In this case you can only hope to get a
new driver from Adaptec. This is no problem any more for all newer
Adaptecs (I personally use one).

FIPS will only work on disks with a sector size of 512 bytes.
It seems that DOS is prepared to deal with different sector sizes, but
so far I have never seen this.

FIPS will not split partitions with 12 bit FATs (you would not want to split
partitions with less than 10 MB, would you?).

FIPS will only split DOS partitions. Partition pable and boot sector must
conform to the MSDOS 3.0+ conventions. This is marked by the system
indicator byte in the partition table, it must have the value 4 (16 bit
sector number) or 6 (32 bit sector number).
It will especially *not* split Linux partitions.

FIPS does not yet work on extended DOS partitions. Support for these has
been planned for a long time, but I can't say when it will come.

FIPS will not work if you already have four partitions, since it needs one
free partition entry.

FIPS will not reduce the original partition to a size with less than 4085
clusters, because this would imply rewriting the 16 bit FAT to a 12 bit FAT.


5. Before you start

Run CHKDSK or (under DOS 6.2) SCANDISK on the partition you want to split.
If you have Norton Disk Doctor or something similar, you may use it alter-
natively. Make sure there remain no 'dead' clusters on the disk.

Prepare a bootable floppy disk in drive A:. Under DOS this is usually done
by giving the command 'sys a:' or 'format a:/s'. Under Windows NT or OS/2
this may be different, if in doubt check your manual or boot from a boot
disk from a DOS PC.

Copy the FIPS files RESTORRB.EXE, FIPS.EXE and ERRORS.TXT to this disk.

Test booting from the prepared floppy disk. Read you manual or ask a local
guru if you can't boot from floppy disk or if you can not access your hard
disk after booting (test this by giving the command 'dir c:', you should
see your hard disk's root directory). If all else fails, try using FIPS
after booting normally from the hard disk (a bit more risky, but sometimes
the last resort).

When you start FIPS (later!), you will be given the opportunity to write
backup copies of your root and boot sector to a file on drive A: called
ROOTBOOT.00x (where x stands for a digit from 0 to 9). If anything goes wrong
while using FIPS, you can restore the original configuration by booting from
the floppy and running RESTORRB. Please note: if you use FIPS more than once
(this is normally not necessary, but it may happen), more than one ROOTBOOT
file is written to the floppy disk. RESTORRB lets you choose which configu-
ration file to restore. The file RESTORRB.000 contains your original confi-
guration. Try not to confuse the versions.

You will need this backup file (ROOTBOOT.00x) if you want to undo the
partition split later.

But before starting FIPS you _must_ now defragment your Harddisk. All of the
space that will be used for the new partition must be free. Be aware that the
Windows Swapfile will not be moved by most defragmentation programs. You must
uninstall it (in the 386enhanced part of the Windows Control Panel) and rein-
stall it after using FIPS.
If you use IMAGE or MIRROR, the last sector of the hard disk contains a
hidden system file with a pointer to your mirror files. You _must_ delete this
file before using FIPS (it will be recreated the next time you run mirror).
Do 'attrib -r -s -h image.idx' or 'attrib -r -s -h mirorsav.fil' in the root
directory, then delete the file.
If FIPS does not offer as much disk space for creation of the new partition
as you would expect it to have, this may mean that

a. You still have too much data in the remaining partition. Consider making
   the new partition smaller or deleting some of the data.

b. There are hidden files in the space of the new partition that have not
   been moved by the defragmentation program. You can find the hidden files
   on the disk by typeing the command 'dir /a:h /s' (and 'dir /a:s /s' for
   the system files). Make sure to which program they belong. If a file is
   a swap file of some program (e.g. NDOS) it is possible that it can be
   safely deleted (and will be recreated automatically later when the need
   arises). See your manual for details.

   If the file belongs to some sort of copy protection, you must uninstall
   the program to which it belongs and reinstall it after repartitioning.

   I can't give you more aid in this - if you really can't figure out what
   to do, contact me directly.

Attention! Do _not_ try to move DOS' hidden system files (ibmbio.com &
ibmdos.com or something similar). You may end up with a hard disk that
will not boot any more. Since these files are already in the first sectors
of the partition, it is not necessary to move them. In DOS 5.0 and later,
at least one of the system files _may_ be moved, but it is nevertheless a
good idea to leave it alone.

When you have run FIPS, you must reboot, so make sure to disable any