Re: big IBM harddisk
<include standard "If this idea breaks something, don't say i didn't warn
you...." disclaimer here>
Hi all,
I have a (bold) idea that *might* solve the "My bios does not see my Big
HDD" problem.
There are several 'magical' boundries in bios/hdd land created in the last
years. these are:
2.1 Gb (mostly on 486)
8.4 Gb (Pentium class mostly)
32.8 Gb (even recent pc's have this one)
note: Don't kill me if i'm off a bit (or byte) here.....
Along the way software solutions where developed (Ontrack, EZDrive) to
overcome these problems. Most (if not all) go into the MBR. To use em your
bios MUST be able to load the MBR. If this is not the case, most hdd's offer
a *special* jumer setting to report a smaller size to the bios. Later, the
diskmanager software re-enables you to use the full capacity of the hdd. As
we linux guys/girls use Lilo/Grub, the mbr is already used. (I know, you
don't have to put em in the mbr, but this is the most commen to put it in
the mbr)
As a lot of you have noticed, Linux is quite able to handle hdd's without
the bios knowing about it. So my conclusion is that all we need the bios to
do is "get the kernel running" and after that, linux can take over,
controlling your hdd's
My idea:
1) set the jumper to the *special* setting
2) Use autodetect in bios (*should* find a smaller hdd than you have
installed)
At this point, you *should* be able to boot using your big hdd. If you stop
here, you loose a lot of diskspace (in my case, my ibm reports 32 gb instead
of 41 so i 'loose' 9 gb). After reading doc's in my kernel source
(2.2.19pre21) if found that i can share my opinion about c/h/s settings with
my kernel by adding "hdx=c/h/s" as a parameter.
3) add hdx=c/h/s to lilo.conf or whatever you use to tell the kernel
something.
I hope that this is the key to get full drive capacity back without a
diskmanager. I haven't tried it yet, i'd like your opinion about it. Is it
sane or stupid ? Is it the solution or *just* the first step? btw, i've
mailed this idea to Mark Lord (maintainer of ide code in the kernel) the
other day, and i hope to hear from him soon.
Feedback please!
Yours,
Nico de Haer
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