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SubjectRe: Detecting BIG ( 17.2 GB ) hard drives under Linux
Hi Khimenko.

>> Now, the problem is that the new BIOS recognized the new hard
>> drive as a 17.2 GB, but Linux recognizes it only as an 8 GB hard
>> drive.

> It's still BIOS problem though :-/ I've seen this.

>> NT recognizes it only as a 2 GB hard drive, but that I believe
>> is OK 'cause the documentation of the hard drive indicates that
>> in order to get it recognized, I'll need to update NT to at
>> least Service Pack 4. I don't use NT as much as to need to get
>> the new service pack, so I'll devoid the new hard drive
>> completely to Linux.

>> So, my question is: how to I get Linux to recognize the full
>> size of the hard drive ?

> You should create partition table there to span the entire disk.
> If BIOS is broken then you can sometimes do it with Windows9X's
> FDISK and/or Partition Magic. When you have correct partition
> table Linux will be able to use full capacity of disk without
> any troubles even if you have broken BIOS.

If you're using LILO as your boot loader, I believe you can put a line
in /etc/lilo.conf to sort this out - something like the following to
define /dev/hdb as having 19876 cylinders, 64 heads and 63 sectors:

disk = hdb,19876,64,63

I'm not sure if the syntax is right as I don't have the relevant
documentation to hand, but it's something along those lines.

>> RH 6.1 comes with a program ( kudzu ) that supposedly is used to
>> recognized new devices, but it fails miserably ( segmentation
>> fault ) with this hard drive. Admittedly, I'm using the kudzu
>> that comes originally with RH 6.1 ( haven't checked if there's
>> an update ).

> Never seen this program :-)

It's a good program, but still in the early stages of development. You
may wish to report this problem to RedHat's Bugzilla for comment...

http://bugzilla.redhat.com/bugzilla/

> It's common problem: you BIOS is "good enough" for Windows9X but
> not "good enough" for Linux :-(( Since Linux will not use BIOS
> when there are exist correct parttion table on disk you can just
> plug disk in some "normal" system and partition it.

That requires that you have a "normal" system handy to plug it
into. However, I believe that the Norton Utilities pack includes a
program that can produce a partition table to match the disk.

> (BTW why I've seen LOTS of such problems with IBM, Dell and
> other brands but NEVER see such problems with
> make-it-yourself-from-cheneese-components systems? Hmm. All such
> system use Award BIOS typically while brands are using it's own
> BIOS... Hmm).

As far as I can tell, most DIY systems have either Award or AMI BIOS
chips, whereas IBM use own brand, and Dell appear to use Phoenix BIOS.

Best wishes from Riley.

* Copyright (C) 1999, Memory Alpha Systems.
* All rights and wrongs reserved.

+----------------------------------------------------------------------+
| There is something frustrating about the quality and speed of Linux |
| development, ie., the quality is too high and the speed is too high, |
| in other words, I can implement this XXXX feature, but I bet someone |
| else has already done so and is just about to release their patch. |
+----------------------------------------------------------------------+
* http://www.memalpha.cx/Linux/Kernel/


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