[sclug] [OT] Linux support for large HDD

[James Wyper]

I have a similar class of machine (IBM 330GL ; 350Mhz PII).

hda is the original 3.2GB disk, hdb is an 80GB one that I added myself.

The large-disk HOWTO said that the 80GB drive would "just work". 
Wrong.

Originally I needed to use a boot floppy with Ontrack (or Discwizard
Starter edition as it was then called) before the system would
recognise more than the first 32GB of hdb.  However, more or less in
desperation, I recompiled my (then 2.4.19) kernel with
CONFIG_IDE_STROKE = Y.  This removed the dependency on Ontrack and I
could boot from the hd.

The large-disk HOWTO has since been updated by the maintainer to
reflect  my (perhaps peculiar) circumstances.

I've now upgraded to the 2.6 kernel which is much easier - you merely
need to add append="hdb=stroke" to the relevant stanza in lilo.conf 
(assuming you use lilo)

Hope this helps,
James.
--- Alex Butcher <lug at assursys.co.uk> wrote:

> On Mon, 8 Aug 2005, Ian Park wrote:
> 
> > Please forgive a "wet behind the ears" question...
> >
> > I'm planning to use an oldish (ca 1998) motherboard (300 MHz
> Pentium II, 
> > 512MB RAM) as the basis of a fileserver for my home network, using
> a 6.3GB 
> > hard drive as the primary master for the OS and a 160GB hard drive
> as the 
> > primary slave for the file store. I'm pretty sure that the BIOS on
> the 
> > motherboard won't support 48-bit LBA, so the *BIOS* won't be able
> to see the 
> > full capacity of the 160GB hard drive (hence the 6.3GB drive for
> the OS...); 
> > however what I've been able to glean from Googling gives me hope
> that once 
> > I've got Linux booted up from the 6.3GB drive the BIOS is
> irrelevant, and the 
> > Linux kernel drivers will look after the big hard drive.
> >
> > Can anyone tell me whether or not I'm being hopelessley optimistic,
> please?
> 
> My understanding is that the three components you need for a 48-bit
> LBA
> device to be supported are:
> 
> a) the BIOS, if you're intending to boot from files over the 137GB
> limit
> b) the OS
> c) the ATA controller.
> 
> You may or may not run into problems on c). Give it a whirl, and let
> us
> know! :-)
> 
> > TIAFYH
> >
> > Ian
> 
> HTH,
> Alex.
> -- 
> Alex Butcher      Brainbench MVP for Internet Security:
> www.brainbench.com
> Bristol, UK                      Need reliable and secure network
> systems?
> PGP/GnuPG ID:0x271fd950                        
> <http://www.assursys.com/>
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