Quote:>I've got a IBM 45GB Deskstar DTLA 307045 with CHS=16383/16/63 (printed
>on the label of the harddisk).
>I suppose these CHS-values are the values of the physical geometry?!
[snip]
>One information on the harddisk-label which could be important on that:
>In LBA-mode there are 90 069 840 sectors
Modern hard disks do not have anything like a physical geometry in the
old-style sense of the term. That "16383/16/63" printed on the drive is
shorthand for "This disk is too big for the ancient disk-size-reporting
method that BIOS 'normal mode' used back in the day."
What exactly is the problem that requires you to pass geometry arguments
to the kernel at boot time? Is your machine's BIOS so old that it can't
be upgraded to something that can handle large disks? Machines built
after 1997 or so should have no problems with most disks. If the BIOS
is too old, you can probably find out what the Linux kernel thinks the
geometry of the disk is by booting from a rescue system like Tom's
RootBoot (http://www.toms.net/rb/ ) and running "fdisk". That will say
something like:
Disk /dev/hda 255 heads, 63 secotrs, 5606 cylinders
Also, Linux kernels prior to 2.2.14 had problems with accessing IDE
disks > 32G. See if you can get a newer kernel--RH 6.2, SuSE 6.4,
Mandrake 7.1, et al shipped with kernels capable of handling IDE disks
up to 137G.
--
Matt G|There is no Darkness in Eternity/But only Light too dim for us to see
Brainbench MVP for Linux Admin / Those who do not understand Unix are
http://www.brainbench.com / condemned to reinvent it, poorly.
-----------------------------/ --Henry Spencer