Yet more info. I ran a little test program to diff the two bsect's and
it appears the only thing different it the # of heads and the # of sectors
in the FAT. Changing both allows the partition to be mounted, albeit in a
corrupted state (the root directory contains stuff in a subdirectory of
the original partition). Below is an `fdisk -l' of my drive setup. (some
stuff deleted due to my paranoia). Notice /dev/hda5 and /dev/hdb5 are the
exact same size.
Disk /dev/hda: 64 heads, 63 sectors, 524 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 4032 * 512 bytes
Device Boot Begin Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/hda5 171 171 348 358816+ 6 DOS 16-bit >=32M
/dev/hda6 349 349 524 354784+ 6 DOS 16-bit >=32M
Disk /dev/hdb: 128 heads, 63 sectors, 935 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 8064 * 512 bytes
Device Boot Begin Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/hdb5 239 239 327 358816+ 6 DOS 16-bit >=32M
/dev/hdb6 328 328 416 358816+ 6 DOS 16-bit >=32M
The program output for /dev/hda5:
---------------------------------
system_id[8] = `MSWIN4.1'
sector_size = 512
cluster_size = 16
reserved = 1
fats = 2
dir_entries = 512
sectors = 0
media = 248
fat_length = 168 <------------------ DIFF BELOW
secs_track = 63
heads = 64 <------------------ DIFF BELOW
hidden = 63
total_sect = 717633
For /dev/hdb5:
--------------
system_id[8] = `MSWIN4.1'
sector_size = 512
cluster_size = 16
reserved = 1
fats = 2
dir_entries = 512
sectors = 0
media = 248
fat_length = 176 <---------------------- !!
secs_track = 63
heads = 128 <---------------------- !!
hidden = 63
total_sect = 717633
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
END OF RANT
-Shagorific, BABY!