[TriLUG] IDE Hard disk limitations BIOS and Linux

[Jason Tower]

some motherboards will choke on disks larger than 137gb.  i recall a 
440bx board (with a p2-450, not really -that- old) i had a couple of 
years ago that refused to boot when a 200gb disk was plugged in.  stuck 
it in a old dell p-133 and it worked fine.  *shrug*

jason

On Monday 20 December 2004 18:02, Rick DeNatale wrote:
> Thanks Jason.
>
> But if I can believe what I'm reading in the Large Disk How-to
> http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/Large-Disk-HOWTO.html Linux should have no
> problems anyway
>
> Quoting from Section 1:
> > You need not read this HOWTO since there are no problems with large
> > hard disks these days.
> >
> > Long ago, disks were large when they had a capacity larger than 528
> > MB, or than 8.4 GB, or than 33.8 GB. These days the interesting
> > limit is 137 GB. In all cases, sufficiently recent Linux kernels
> > handle the disk fine.
>
> ...
>
> > Advice
> >
> > For large SCSI disks: Linux has supported them from very early on.
> > No action required. For large IDE disks (over 8.4 GB): make sure
> > your kernel is 2.0.34 or later. For large IDE disks (over 33.8 GB):
> > make sure your kernel is 2.0.39/2.2.14/2.3.21 or later. For large
> > IDE disks (over 137 GB): make sure your kernel is 2.4.19/2.5.3 or
> > later.
>
> RH 9 is kernel 2.4.20, I'm currently running 2.4.20-28.9smp
>
> It sounds as if none of the currently available disks should be a
> problem for a linux only system, even with the mobo ide interfaces,
> or am I missing something?
>
> So what I'm now thinking is that I'll get two 160GB drives, I was
> looking at the Intrex site at the WD Caviars and they look like they
> hit the right price performance point.
>
> At the same time I take the system down, I'll probably replace the
> CD-ROM drive with a DVD-ROM drive that I've got lying around from a
> salvaged machine.  I think that it makes sense to put one of the IDE
> hard drives and one of the optical drives on each IDE interface,
> which seems as if it would give better performance for doing things
> like copying CD/DVD ROMS directly between the optical drives.
>
> Does this make sense?
>
> On Mon, 20 Dec 2004 17:09:01 -0500, Jason Tower <jason at cerient.net> 
wrote:
> > you can add a pci ide controller card that supports ata/66, that'll
> > get you around this issue easily, especially if you're booting off
> > a scsi disk.  i have several if you want to try one.
> >
> > jason
> >
> > On Monday 20 December 2004 17:01, Rick DeNatale wrote:
> > > A few days ago I asked for Hard disk recommendations to add some
> > > large hard disk(s) to my old IBM Intelistation M 6889.
> > >
> > > After trying to research IDE hard disks, I've gotten more and
> > > more confused about the the size limits for IDE drives.
> > >
> > > I'm not sure how old this machine is, but it seems to have the
> > > latest BIOS available which is dated May 12, 2000 (or at least
> > > that's what the download page says, I haven't yet re-booted,
> > > gotta keep uptime going!).  This machine has both SCSI and IDE
> > > interfaces. It's got two 9GB SCSI drives in it now but the only
> > > IDE devices are a CD/ROM and a DVD Writer.
> > >
> > > So how do I figure out how big an IDE drive I can add to this
> > > machine, before I spen>d my money?
> > >
> > > How do I verify what the BIOS supports?  The Tech Ref says that
> > > it supports LBA for drives bigger than 528 MB, which seems to
> > > imply that it might well be limited to 120GB or less.
> > >
> > > Do I even need to worr>y about this. If I'm only running Linux I
> > > understand that the kernel doesn't even use the BIOS is this
> > > right? I figure that I'm going to
>
> keep the SCSI drives, and one of them will
>
> > > still be the boot device.
> >
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