Windows disk partitioning and cylinders?

[andy_w...@hotmail.com]

Hi

As I'm donating an ancient PC (Pentium II) to a charity, but don't
want to give away my separately purchased copy of Windows, I was
backing the system down to minimal DOS + CD ROM driver; enough for the
next user to install a new version of Windows. As part of this re-
installation I deleted all partitions, aside from the primary
partition, so I could recreate them the right size for DOS to handle.

This worked OK with the first of two hard disks. However, when I tried
to use fdisk to recreate the partition on a second hard disk, it
refused to recognise the disk at all. Looking more closely I found the
BIOS wasn't recognizing the disk as it had too many cylinders (4970,
whereas the BIOS reported a maximum of 1024).

Now it's probably not an important problem as the PC is on the way to
the scrap yard once the useful bit have been cannibalised.

But what I'm curious to know is: what is Windows NT/2000 doing that
allows it to access the disk ok to partition it in the first place?
And should it have been working?

Thanks

Andy