Big (> 137GB) Drive Support
Darrell Shandrow
plug-discuss@lists.plug.phoenix.az.us
Wed, 6 Nov 2002 21:06:56 -0700
Hi David,
Just for purposes of reference, how old was this computer that would flat
refuse to boot the 120 GB hard drive? Do you know any particular reason why
this happened? Which BIOS did it run? I have a late-1997 to early-1998
ventage machine on which I will be installing RH 8.0 soon, and I'd like to
have an idea what I'll be able to get away with; again, nothing fancy like
dual-booting...
Thanks.
----- Original Message -----
From: "David Mandala" <davidm@them.com>
To: <plug-discuss@lists.plug.phoenix.az.us>
Sent: Wednesday, November 06, 2002 8:14 PM
Subject: Re: Big (> 137GB) Drive Support
> You thoughts are for the most part correct. However, it is possible for
> some machine to refuse to boot on big hard drives, in that case even a
> small partition will not work.
>
> For example when I hacked my TIVO's I put a 120G HD in my old computer
> to prep it for the TIVO, the machine would not boot until I turned off
> that HD in the bios completely! Since Linux does not use the PC's BIOS
> for anything past the initial boot once I was in Linux all was fine,
> Linux saw the HD and I was able to prep it. But I would not have been
> able to ever boot from in in my PC.
>
> The Linux BIOS project is quite nice, if you are using a mother board
> that they support you can get a sub 5 second boot time into Linux vs the
> up to 1 minute boot time of some PC's.
>
> Cheers,
>
> Davidm
>
> On Wed, 2002-11-06 at 20:02, Darrell Shandrow wrote:
> > Hi Fritz,
> >
> > Drive geometry and how it relates to a system's BIOS is still something
> > which I have a bit of difficulty getting my mind around. I know that a
> > motherboard with an obsolete BIOS will not work with modern very large
hard
> > drives, and that various limits in cylinders, heads and sectors values
in
> > BIOS have resulted in size limitations, such as the 8.4 GB limit.
> >
> > But, I think some of this can be gotten around through the operating
system.
> > For example, I installed a 20 GB hard drive into a 1997 ventage system,
> > performed auto-detection on the BIOS, then successfully installed RedHat
> > Linux 7.2 onto that drive. I thought I'd run into some sort of
BIOS/drive
> > size limit, and have to make multiple partitions, but that turned out to
be
> > unnecessary. I was able to have a small boot partition at the beginning
of
> > the drive, followed by the large partition (somewhere around 18 or 19
GB)
> > and a swap partition, with no trouble at all! Note that this is a
> > single-boot system; only Linux has been installed. There's nothing
fancy
> > happening like dual-booting.
> >
> > From the research I have done, here's what I think is happening. The
BIOS
> > is auto-detecting the drive, and coming up with CHS for a smaller drive
size
> > than the 20 GB limit, even after doing some sort of LBA translation.
> > Unfortunately, since I can't see the BIOS screen (that happens long
before
> > the OS loads, and thus no screen reader is running) I can't tell you the
CHS
> > figures the BIOS is generating. The system then proceeds to boot from
the
> > hard disk's boot sector at the beginning of the disk. Since that points
to
> > Linux, the Linux kernel loads. The Kernel is in the boot partition,
which
> > is also the first partition on the drive, so this fits well within
whatever
> > the BIOS drive size limit would be. At that point, the Linux kernel
takes
> > over disk access functions, and is smart enough to work around the size
> > limitations. Am I in the right ballpark on this? Additional
information
> > would be great.
> >
> > Thanks.
> >
> > ----- Original Message -----
> > From: "Fritz" <fkolberg@qwest.net>
> > To: "PLUG-Discuss" <plug-discuss@lists.plug.phoenix.az.us>
> > Sent: Wednesday, November 06, 2002 10:22 AM
> > Subject: Big (> 137GB) Drive Support
> >
> >
> > > Hello,
> > >
> > > Does anyone know the status of the support for the new
> > > big (greater than 137GB) IDE drives that are starting
> > > to appear? I would imagine there are prerequisites
> > > such as a fairly new mobo, BIOS updates, etc.
> > >
> > > Do most of these drives (e.g. Western-Digital, Maxtor)
> > > include a controller card in their "boxed retail"
> > > versions (or do they rely on the mobo IDE controller)?
> > >
> > > Reply to list ... TIA.
> > >
> > > Fritz
> > >
> > >
> > >
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> --
> David IS Mandala
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> Phoenix, AZ (480) 460-7546 HP, (602) 321-8277 CP
> http://www.them.com/~davidm/
>
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