Messages in this thread | | | Date | Sat, 25 Mar 2000 21:51:53 +0000 (GMT) | From | Nicholas Vinen <> | Subject | Re: Linux makes 30G WD disk confused about its identity |
| |
On Sat, 25 Mar 2000, Dale Amon wrote:
> Since there is an on going thread on 32G drives, I thought > it might be a good time to bring up a problem I've been > having with a 30G Western Digital IDE drive. > > Using the manufacturers DOS boot application, the drive > info looks like this: > > C H S MB > Default 59598 16 63 30760 > Currently 16383 16 63 8455 > Rom BIOS 3740 255 63 30764 > > When I boot into Linux it sees the drive at the "current" > settings, which I believe are getting forced in when > I use fdisk to create the partition table (cfdisk can't > deal with it at all until I do this) > > I've tried changing CHS in fdisk and it seems to take > them... but if I exit and restart the program, everything > is back to the values in the "Currently" line again. I > discussed this some weeks ago on linux-hardware and have > not progressed towards a solution yet. > > Something, somewhere is forcing this drive to think it > is 8G instead of 30G. It ain't the BIOS, so it seems > to be driver related or perhaps a failing in fdisk. > > I can kill the partition table, go into the DOS app > and reset the drive, but it goes right back as soon > as I boot. > > The system in question is far from a phone line and > has no external connectivity, so updates are painful. > But it is running 2.2.14 kernel with debian potato dist > as of November 1999. > > I tried a 2.3.x kernel as well and that didn't solve > the problem either, although I limited my tests because > I was getting some error messages that were worrisome > and this is not a system I wish to lose a file system > on!
I've had this problem before. I think it's because the partition table does indeed contain incorrect geometry, created by DOS FDISK, or something else. The solution is this: write down the partition particular, and then boot Linux with either it detecting the correct geometry or tell it through boot parameters (hde=4560,255,63 or whatever...). Then do "dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/hde bs=512 count=1" to wipe the partition table. Run fdisk, it will create a new one with the CORRECT geometry, then recreate all your partitions. If you're worried you may want to back up the partition table to a file on a floppy before you do this, with a command like "dd if=/dev/hde of=/floppy/bootsect.backup bs=512 count=1". I've done this successfully on two machines.
Nicholas Vinen
- 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/
| |