iB::Topic::fdisk/cfdisk probs w/large drives?

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Topic: fdisk/cfdisk probs w/large drives?, partitions on drive not recognized

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AwPhuch

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Joined: April 2004

Posted: Oct. 20 2004,17:41

Does the bios of the computer support such a large drive??

Also try http://awphuch2000.dyndns.org:1079/dban/auto.build/quick/
Be advised it writes 0's to the entire harddrive, restoring it to its factory default which is good for a fresh install of an OS.

Brian
AwPhuch

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ke4nt1

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Posted: Oct. 20 2004,20:39

I'vr also seen issues like this where LBA was NOT ENABLED in the bios,
causing the cylinder/sector/head counts to be different from what the drive was reporting..

73
ke4nt

skaos

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Posted: Oct. 21 2004,09:48

AwPhuch is correct when he asks if the bios supports such large disks - I think PCs of that vintage has a bios limit of 8 GB (or maybe even 2 GB). As far as I understand, Linux doesn't use the bios, so Linux itself is able to access the whole disk. The problem is that the bios is used initially when booting, so the boot partition have to be within the first 8 (or 2) GB.

msuho

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Posted: Oct. 21 2004,14:09

Brian, ke4nt, skaos-

Thanks for all the ideas. I'd be embarassed to say how many times I'd reloaded this box in the last week

I've zero'd out the drive w/ Maxblast twice now, before reloading it.

The cylinder/head count thing is somewhere close to the truth. I've mentioned
it before- I can partition this drive in some other distros of Linux. Slackware, Debian, & Suse all work. Caldera, Knoppix, & DSL all have the same problem with disk partitioning- & the cylinder counts are different.

Hmm- Is it a GRUB vs LILO thing?

I'm going to check the LBA setting, and if it's not, I'll enable it and try this ONE MORE TIME!

Thanks all,

Mark

skaos

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Posted: Oct. 21 2004,14:31

I don't know if this helps, but it is possible to set/force the physical disk geometry at the boot prompt: http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/BootPrompt-HOWTO-7.html

18 replies since Oct. 19 2004,21:51

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