Path: utzoo!utgpu!watmath!iuvax!mailrus!cornell!rochester!ciaraldi
From: ciaraldi@cs.rochester.edu (Mike Ciaraldi)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.hp
Subject: Un-partitioning Hard Disk on HP 9000/300 Series
Keywords: 9000/300 9153 Hard Disk Partition
Message-ID: <1989Aug18.014354.189@cs.rochester.edu>
Date: 18 Aug 89 01:43:54 GMT
Reply-To: ciaraldi@cs.rochester.edu (Mike Ciaraldi)
Organization: U of Rochester, CS Dept, Rochester, NY
Lines: 32

I recently "inherited" an HP Series 9000 Model 310 system,
equipped with a 9153 disk system (floppy plus 10 Meg hard disk).
It was originally set up with BASIC version 4, and we just
upgraded to BASIC 5.13.  The manuals for the new BASIC haven't 
arrived yet.

[I realize that this is not a Precision Architecture machine
running Unix and X-Windows, but it does the job it was bought for]. 

Recently we started running out of space on the hard disk
(no kidding, with only 10 Meg, but it gets worse).
When we added up the files, they only came to about 1.5 Megabytes!
Some poking around with the BASIC utilities seems to indicate that
the hard disk has been partitioned (by the previous user)
to four volumes of about 2 Meg each (actually about 9800 records of 256 bytes).

I tried using INITIALIZE again, but this only formats one partition 
at a time.  So, my question is:  How do you un-partition the
hard disk, and get it back to being just one volume?

I did call the local HP office, and they said everyone who knew
this sort of thing was out of town.

While we're on the subject of disks, I see that BASIC 5 now supports
a Hierarchical File System.  How much overhead does this consume on
the disk?  And does it eliminate the requirement that files be
stored on contiguous blocks?

Thanks in advance,
Mike Ciaraldi
uucp:  ...rutgers!rochester!ciaraldi
arpa:  ciaraldi@cs.rochester.edu