lkml.org 
[lkml]   [2000]   [Feb]   [7]   [last100]   RSS Feed
Views: [wrap][no wrap]   [headers]  [forward] 
 
Messages in this thread
/
From
Date
SubjectRe: Detecting BIG ( 17.2 GB ) hard drives under Linux
In <Pine.OSF.3.96.1000206173721.18512A-100000@ernie.cs.pitt.edu> Hugo L. Varotto (hvarotto@cs.pitt.edu) wrote:

> 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.

> Is there a special option that I need to set up in the kernel or a module to
> do it ?

No.

> 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 :-)

> If for whatever reason nobody knows what's going wrong, I could run some
> tests ( provided
> that soemone explains me what to do 'cause I've never delved in the
> filesystem modules
> of the kernel, so I'm not sure what to try ) to get this solved.

> Below I'm attaching the configuration of the BIOS, and the output of fdisk
> and cfdisk.
> I've created a 2 GB partition in the drive from NT to see if somehow
> afterwards Linux
> recognizes it as a 17.2 hard drive, but with no success.

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 (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).





-
To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in
the body of a message to majordomo@vger.rutgers.edu
Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/

\
 
 \ /
  Last update: 2005-03-22 13:56    [W:0.067 / U:0.048 seconds]
©2003-2020 Jasper Spaans|hosted at Digital Ocean and TransIP|Read the blog|Advertise on this site