Large Hard Drive install problems

[brad.mugleston at comcast.net]

Brad Mugleston, KI0OT

There are 10 types of people in this world.  Those that
understand binary and those that don't.

On Tue, 7 Jun 2005, Rick Stevens wrote:

> Mugleston, Brad wrote:
> > I was given a PII computer - generic brand, can't read who made the board
> > w/o pulling the computer apart.  I'm going to use it as a file server for my
> > house and I've got a 160G hard drive to put in it.  It only recognizes 8G of
> > the drive.  Do I need a special card for this drive or am I doing something
> > wrong during the FC2 install? Maybe a bios upgrade?
> >
> > If its a driver card what information do I need to have to get the right
> > one?  It's a 160G ATA 100 drive.  Slow but cheep.
> >
> > If it's bios - I haven't upgraded a bios for a long time will I need to
> > install windows to do this (I don't remember seeing a bios upgrade for Linux
> > but again that was awhile ago).
>
> Well, gee.  PIIs are pretty long in the tooth.  It may be that it won't
> grock anything bigger than 8GB.
>
> First, see if the BIOS supports LBA mode.  If it does, then set it and
> see if it recognizes the drive properly.  If it doesn't, then see if
> there's a "user specified" setting where you can put in the cylinders,
> heads and sectors.  Remember that old BIOS' often couldn't handle >8GB
> because of the way they stored the CHS values.  You should calculate
> the number of blocks on the drive (cylinders * heads * sectors), then
> bugger the CHS values you feed the BIOS.  Most often the BIOS is limited
> to 1024 cylinders so you have to tell it 255 heads, then divide the
> total number of blocks by 261120 (1024 * 255), and use that value for
> the sector count.  Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't.
>
> Good luck.

Thanks,  I probably need it.  Yes the BIOS handles LBA mode but
thats when it stopped at 8G (I just let it automatically discover
it).  So how many blocks do I need for 160G?  I think thats what
your suggesting I do.

Brad

> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
> - Rick Stevens, Senior Systems Engineer     rstevens at vitalstream.com -
> - VitalStream, Inc.                       http://www.vitalstream.com -
> -                                                                    -
> -         If this is the first day of the rest of my life...         -
> -                        I'm in BIG trouble!                         -
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