Very Computer

Thnx
hillbilly

Quote:>Installed a 60gig segate 2nd drive on my Ultra5/sol8 lates patches but
>format doesnt seem to see it. Can some one point me to a primer on
>getting Sol8 to see all 60gigs?  I've tried google searches/sunsolve
>and even our friends at #soloris/undernet but no luck.

>Thnx
>hillbilly

Sol8 sees the disk, but sees it as a 6gig not 60gig. The disk is a
segate disk.

oh here is the link of the above mentioned psot:
http://groups.google.com/groups?q=Ultra+5++IDE+drive+group:comp.sys.s...

Thanks,
hillbilly
---------

Part of the problem is in the "format" utility which limits you to 32767
cylinders and 64 heads. These large IDE have more than this. There is a
limit before you get to the really big LBA48 drives at 128Gb, but I now have
my 160Gb drive at least seeing 64Gb. I think I can get to 128Gb if I can
mount a floppy which has the new patched "format" that can see 64565
cylinders and heads.

It appears (no guarantee though - it works for me) that addresses on disks
just work by cylinder number. Just mulitply the number of heads and
cylinders to get the number that the manufacturer says is supported.

Open "format" and select the disk and then "type". For me to get 64Gb with a
16 head drive I entered that I had 32767 cylinders (the limit) and 32769
physical cylinders (to give 2 alternates) and 64 heads. Then just save this
by labbelling the disk. I cheated on a Solaris 8 install by right mouse
clicking on the OpenLook background as the install started and bringing up a
command shell, before the install really got going. I selected "format" from
this and have a big drive!

I do hope this helps!

Colin.

Quote:> Ok I found this on a search of the other newsgroups. Basically states
> that there is no need to format these large disks. Just re-lable them
> or modify the VTOC. What do I relabel it as?

> Sol8 sees the disk, but sees it as a 6gig not 60gig. The disk is a
> segate disk.

> oh here is the link of the above mentioned psot:

You can safely choose whatever numbers work for you without regard
to the drive's physical geometry. I guarantee you that your drive
doesn't actually have 64 heads.

I can't explain why Sun's format program on a SPARC is still so dumb
about labelling ATA disk drives and how to fake a workable disk geometry
(other than the fact that most Sun engineers have never seen a blank disk
drive; Sun gets all their drives pre-labelled from the factory but nobody
in their right mind pays Sun's premium prices for a second drive, so
maybe they're doing it to punish you rather than they just don't know
better).