Re: hard drives larger than 137gb
In article <20030309163020$236c@gated-at.bofh.it> you wrote:
> Thanks--that is quite helpful. I may stick to less than 137gb to avoid
> using the adapter card.
There are two missinterpreted (because they aren't related) definitions in
ATA standards:
- physical interface PIO, S/MDMA, UDMA
- logical (software) acces to data: CHS, LBA (LBA28) and LBA 48bit
As I know all current ATA drives (not S-ATA) even theoretical 128PiB have
physical interface usable on all plain ATA controllers starting from i386 (or
even i286). Only last ATA-7 standard gives compatybility level for <PIO-4 as
option.
Logical access is a software only problem. LBA48 drives respect old command
set. There are only two situations that you can't solve without additional
hardware/bios:
- some (or most?) intelligent harware raid controllers
- buggy bioses that hang up computer even if the drive is switched of in
bios
In all other (normal) cases you can use new drives at least as secondary.
Don't use bios autodetect feature. Try (in bios) manual define geometry or
switch the drive off (when bios strikes - in this case you can't use the
drive as primary). Read Large-Disk-HOWTO even if it is a litle outdated :)
I use one UDMA133 ATA-7 drive as primary in 486/33 on plain (9 years old) ATA
controller. Yes it's smaller than 128GiB (40GiB) but as I wrote it's only
sotware problem that linux has solved.
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