How do I install Linux in an old IDE 540Mb drive that uses Ez-drive?

by Miguel Pint » Thu, 24 Oct 1996 04:00:00

You'll probably know this already, but ez-drive is the
software that allows the use of the total drive space(540Mb).
The computer is a 486 dx2-66, but that probably doesn't make a
difference.

I've tried to install Linux several times (and in several
different ways) but I got nowhere. I am trying to install
linux in one partition and Win95 or Dos in the other, but if
anyone can point me the way to install just linux that'll be
just fine.

Keep in mind that the ez-drive software is installed in the
drive bios(i think).

Any help on this would be appreciated.

Top

1. Patritioning WD 8.4 GB drive and Linux and EZ-Drive/EZ-Bios

I just installed a Western Digital 8.4 GB drive on my Micron machine
with a Micronics M54Hi motherboard as the second drive. This has the
PhoenixBIOS 4.04 which cannot support disks larger than 7.8 GB. There
is a BIOS (v5.05) upgrade available from Micro Firmware but for $79! I
installed the WD EZ-Drive software and it partitioned the drive in 4
with about 2.1 GB per partition. I can see these partitions OK in Win95
(though I do have a spurious E: drive that cannot be accessed).

In Linux (RedHat 4.1 - yes, part of the reason of getting the new drive
was to upgrade to RH5.2), fdisk sees only the first partition of the hard
drive (as /dev/hdb1 with about 2.1GB) with the rest of the drive seen as one
partition with unknown type. If I use linux fdisk to partition the disk
in what I _think_ is the same partitions as EZ-Drive used then Win95 sees
the first partition but cannot read the other three. Repartitioning the
drive with EZ-Drive causes the original problem (i.e. can only see the two
partitions in Linux).

I know Western Digital claims that EZ-Drive does not support Unix but
the Large Disk mini-HOWTO claims that Linux will work with EZ-Drive. I
seem to be almost there. Has anyone got this working or have any
suggestions?

Thanks in advance for any advice.

Leslie Groer

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