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Bug#260225: Sarge installer not recognising partition table for disk larger than 137GB

Controllers that don't believe in disks larger than 137 GB(decimal) report any disk larger than that as being exactly 137 GB in size. This is probably why cfdisk et al are telling you that your partitions go beyond the end of the disk -- as far as they know, the disk ends before the beginning of the partition: at 137 GB.
It's a good sign that Windows can see the tail of the disk. That means that the controller is capable of seeing it, even if Linux isn't forcing the right mode to make it do so. It's also a hopeful sign that Knoppix can mount the partitions on the tail of the disk.
To see if the problem really lies with parted and/or cfdisk you might try them under Knoppix...
Is there a jumper or BIOS setting for the controller (or on the disk itself) to tell it to always use large disk mode? (I don't know what the official name for that mode is -- maybe somebody on the list knows?) That would be worth a try.
I know it's possible to use disks larger than 137 GB with Linux -- I'm doing it! 

Rick


On Monday, July 19, 2004, at 08:33 PM, Sara Falamaki wrote:


On Mon, Jul 19, 2004 at 04:15:36PM -0400, Rick Thomas wrote:

I don't know if this is relevant, but some IDE controllers only
recognize the first 128 GB(binary) = 137*10^9 bytes.

Is it possible that your controller has two modes?  Windows uses one
mode that recognizes the whole disk, and Linux uses the other
(compatibility?) mode that only recognizes the first 137 GB(decimal)...? 

Doubt it, as the problem doesn't seem to be recognising the whole
disk, 4 parts appear under /dev/discs/disc1/ as expected.  I was also
able to mount all the partitions in knoppix.  An error arises when
parted (or cfdisk) try to read the partition table, and die when
they think there is a partition after the end of the disk.

With parted -s /dev/discs/disc1/disc print I get the message:
       "Error: Can't have a partition outside the disk"

With cfdisk, doing the same thing, I get:

       "FATAL ERROR: Bad primary partition 3: Partition begins
	   after end-of-disk"

 -S
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