Installing DOS on IBM 36Gb Hard Disk

We tried installing DOS 6.2 and IBM PC DOS in a 500Mb DOS partition on an IBM 160 36Gb Hard Drive. When we tried to boot with either version of DOS, it wouldn’t recognize C: as a system disk. We found that if we installed WIN98 System files to make it a bootable disk, it would recognize C: as a system disk.

Have others experienced this problem? Do you know if DOS 7.0 will work with this drive? (This DOS partition is for a Novell 5.1 server)