[H-GEN] Large hard drive support

[Frank Brand]

(Note reply-to: being general at humbug.org.au vs Frank Brand <fbrand at uq.net.au>)

Hilton Travis wrote:
> 
> (Note reply-to: being general at humbug.org.au vs "Hilton Travis" <QuarkComputers at usa.net>)
> 


At the risk of being flamed by Bruce (again) for wasting bandwidth I
enclose, for general consumption, one guy's solution to the problem,
since a lot of people consider the Large Disk Howto a touch difficult to
understand.


QUOTE ON:-

I had the same problem.  I was using Partition Magic 4.0, though.  It
took
me about a month of occasional tinkering and reading some newsgroup
postings
for clues, but I finally figured it out.  My system has an IBM 14.4GB
drive
in it.

I found that with RedHat 5.0, which I was previously using on my old
computer, that it just plain didn't work well with drives over 8GB, even
with a command line option at boot.  RH 5.2 actually works, but requires
the
command line to get it to recognize the full capacity of the drive.

First, I had to resize and move my FAT32 Win98 partition.  I shrank it
to
10GB from 14.4GB and then moved it to the end of the drive so I had
space at
the beginning (you'll see why in a minute).  I then restarted my system
with
the RedHat 5.2 CD in the drive (booting to the CD).  When it asks you to
either press enter to continue with setup or enter any additional
parameters, type this and then enter:

   linux hda=1757,255,63

This will force Linux to see the entire capacity of your hard drive
using
1757 cylinders, 255 heads, 63 sectors, even though your 14.4GB shows up
as
16383, 16, 63 in BIOS or in your manual.  16383/16/63 is actually 8GB,
though.  With any drive larger than 8.4GB, you will see that its CHS
settings are always 16383/16/63.  My IBM 14.4GB I found (after doing
some
computational work) was technically 28005/16/63.  At least, that worked
in
Linux for it to recognize the full capacity.  I also had to check
"Linear"
during LILO setup just to get LILO to install without errors.  The
problem I
ran into with "linux hda=28005,16,63" during boot, however, was that
after
installation, LILO would not run and I had to insert my emergency boot
disk
into the system and re-write the master boot record so that at least
Win98
would boot.  The only way I could boot Linux was by using the Rescue
Disk.
I also had to check "Linear" during LILO setup just to get LILO to
install
without errors.

Because I had Linux set up for 28005/16/63, my 3.8GB Linux partition did
not
fit completely into the 1023 cylinder limit (because 1023/16/63 is only
504MB).  DOH!  I found that when I set it up with 1757/255/63, Linux
still
saw the full capacity of the drive, and a much larger percentage of the
drive could be used and still be within the "1023" cylinder limit.
1023/255/63 to Linux is about 8GB.

So as long as your Linux partition is the first partition on the drive
and
is less than 8GB (or fits within the first 8GB), LILO will install and
work
properly.  Mine works perfectly and shows no partition overlaps or
problems.

QUOTE OFF

Happy partitioning. 
-- 
Frank Brand
E-mail: fbrand at uq.net.au
Homepage: http://www.uq.net.au/~zzfbrand

--
This is list (humbug) general handled by majordomo at lists.humbug.org.au .
Postings only from subscribed addresses of lists general or general-post.