Large HDD

[zeus]

I am trying to install a 40GB Maxtor HDD in a RedHat 6.2 system. I have installed Western Digital drives of this size without a problem . Are the large Maxtor drives a problem?

[BobjoB]

what exactly is the problem? ive installed 60 and 20gb maxtor drives w/o any problems

[zeus]

Originally posted by BobjoB:
what exactly is the problem? ive installed 60 and 20gb maxtor drives w/o any problems

Linux is reading this drive as only 20GB. I have gone into fdisk to attempt to change the geometry of the drive. I have looked around to try to figure out the best way to do this. But I have gotten differing answers.
Whatever I try it returns to 20GB.

[BobjoB]

what kernel are you running?
use cfdisk to format the drive fdisk has problems doing large drives because it hasnt been updated in a while.

[zeus]

Originally posted by BobjoB:
what kernel are you running?
use cfdisk to format the drive fdisk has problems doing large drives because it hasnt been updated in a while.

RedHat 6.1 has the 2.2.14-20 kernel. I tried cfdisk like you suggested but it will not write the partition table. It is saying that DOS MBR cannot boot this. does this mean I have a bad master boot record?

[BobjoB]

no, all that means is that one of your partitions is not set to active/bootable, the partition table was written but its warning that you cant boot it from dos which doesnt matter unless its a main drive and your dual booting.
heres the gist of what you should do.

1) backup any data you had on the drive
2) cfsidk the drive and partition up all the space
3) if your booting off the drive set your /boot partition to bootable or active
4) write and quit cfdisk
5) format the partitions and restore your data

[zeus]

This partition is to be extra storage when I get it to work. The primary drive is bootable to linux only. You were right. It had written the partition table. However, when I put a filesystem on the drive and mounted it, it read only 2Gig. Going to try playing with the Bios (amibios R3.0 : Supermicro P6SBA motherboard.) If this does not work I may go get a WD HDD. Since I have gotten those to work. Thanks for your help.

[BobjoB]

update your kernel, that probably will fix your problem, and also your bios if you can.

[D-Termind]

Originally posted by zeus:
I am trying to install a 40GB Maxtor HDD in a RedHat 6.2 system. I have installed Western Digital drives of this size without a problem . Are the large Maxtor drives a problem?

I have a 45G IBM drive and no problems.



------------------
D-Termind

[Paul Weaver]

see http://www.linuxdoc.org/HOWTO/Large-Disk-HOWTO-12.html#verylarge
too

[Stackrat]

Silly question, but, does your BIOS recognize drives over 20GB?

I had the same problem with a 45GB Maxtor and a 33.8GB BIOS limit. Here was my solution:

1) Install the MaxBlast translation software. This allows you access to the entire drive even if your BIOS doesn't.

2) During the install, it will ask you to lay out your partition scheme. Make the first partition as small as possible (I made mine 32MB, which was overkill). Partition the rest of the drive as you like even if they're created as DOS partions. This makes step 4c easier since you'll only have to change the partition types.

3) When it prompts you, insert a DOS (gasp) disk and configure it to boot to DOS (gasp, again!) Hmm, why not FreeDOS?

4) Install Linux. You can fdisk the rest of the drive as you see fit, with a few minor inconvienences:
4a) Leave the first DOS partition alone.
4b) The second partition must be the extended wrapper partition [Type f - Win95 Ext'd (LBA)] and fill the entire balance of the drive
4c) You can create all of your Linux partitions (partition No's 5 and up) within the extended wrapper partition (partition No 2) See my fdisk output below.

5) Install loadlin on the DOS partion, copy the kernel to it and edit autoexec.bat to bootstrap the linux kernel.

6) NEVER try to move, rename, or otherwise fsck with the kernel in your DOS partition from DOS!!! DOS WILL CORRUPT IT AND YOU WILL BE VERY PISSED AS YOU SEARCH FOR YOU LINUX BOOT FLOPPIES!!!

Then you're done!

Disk /dev/hda: 255 heads, 63 sectors, 5605 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/hda1 * 1 4 32098+ 6 FAT16
/dev/hda2 5 5604 44982000 f Win95 Ext'd (LBA)
/dev/hda5 5 377 2996091 83 Linux native
/dev/hda6 378 999 4996183+ 83 Linux native
/dev/hda7 1000 4982 31993416 83 Linux native
/dev/hda8 4983 5579 4795371 83 Linux native
/dev/hda9 5580 5604 200781 82 Linux swap

[This message has been edited by Stackrat (edited 16 November 2000).]

[zeus]

I went out and got two IBM 45GB drives and had them configured and mounted in a 90GB raid 0 partition in fifteen minutes. I am supposing that the Maxtors do require extra software to run. Thanks for your help everyone.