> Hi,
> Unless WD has changed something since I installed a Caviar drive EZ drive
> does not work with Unix based OS's
> Jim
> > Hello folks,
> > I am trying to install a new 4.3 GB Caviar hard drive on my machine, and
> > apparently I need to use a piece of software called EZ-Drive to allow my
> > machine to see the whole drive. (It seems that my machine's BIOS doesn't
> > know how to deal with disks bigger than 2 GB: it's an old 486.) The Large
> > Disk Mini-HOWTO doc seems to say that Linux is compatible with EZ-Drive,
> > though only after kernel version 1.3.18 or something like that.
> > Is anyone out there sucessfully using Linux with EZ-Drive? If so, what
> > distribution are you using (and what kernel version)? Did you have to jump
> > through any extra hoops to get it to work? I need to put Windows95 on the
> > disk along with Linux, and Win95 apparently needs EZ-Drive to be installed,
> > so doing away with EZ-Drive isn't an option. Just as an experiment I tried
> > installing an old distribution of Linux that I had (kernel v1.2.13) with
> > EZ-Drive already installed, and the Linux installer seemed to overwrite all
> > or part of EZ-Drive with LILO on the disk's master boot record, putting
> > things into a very weird state. I'm prepared to get a new distribution of
> > Linux, but only if I can be reasonably confident that it will work with
> > EZ-Drive.
> > Thanks in advance,
> > Adrian Cook
I have Linux working with EZ-Drive. I lucked out though as I had linux
installed on
a seperate drive from the WD drive that EZ-Drive was handling.
I had a problem in that the version of ide.c in my kernel 2.0.35 did not support
the
remap EZ-Drive picked for my system. (i.e. 240 heads/track). As such fdisk
indicated that there was a logical to physical mismatch. I worked up a patch
for
fix this problem and recompiled my kernel. After recompile every thing worked
fine. I am even able to use LILO to boot using MBR.
Several notes.
My patch had to be installed. I had to boot from floppy initially with patch on
floppy version. Then ran LILO setup.
NOTE...
EZ-Drive places a fake partition table and MBR on sector 0 of track 0 of the
drive
which causes EZ-Drive to be booted. EZ-Drive then loads its driver and remaps
sector 1 of track 0 to sector 0 and then boots using the DOS (i.e. LILO)
MBR from
sector 1.
If Linux detects EZ-Drive Partition type it will automatically remap a request
for
sector 0 of track 0 to sector 1 of sector 0. This should allow Linux to
properly
handle EZ-Drive disks.
I have full access to the WD drive (my MS-DOG) partitions and it is set as the
active drive.
Regards,
Gregg Berg
[
ide.diff < 1K ]
--- ide.c.sav Sat Jul 11 23:09:44 1998
int ide_xlate_1024 (kdev_t i_rdev, int xparm, const char *msg)
{
ide_drive_t *drive;
- static const byte head_vals[] = {4, 8, 16, 32, 64, 128, 255, 0};
+ static const byte head_vals[] = {4, 8, 16, 32, 64, 128, 240, 255, 0};
const byte *heads = head_vals;
unsigned long tracks;
by