[svlug] very large hard drives

[Ron]

Kim wrote:

>I just read about 200 and 250 gig hard drives. Does Linux (2.4.20) support these whoppers or should I not waste my money?
>  
>
As per Tim's reply, yes... I just installed a 200 gig WD for a new 
install of Gentoo. I used Gentoo's boot disk _without luck_ using the 
Promise Controller (came with the Western Digital), but with a bios 
upgrade (some older mother boards may require it) I was able to attach 
the drive to my mb's secondary IDE, the rest was magic :-) (Note: I 
believe (?) the Promise Controller must be compiled as part of the 
kernel, if you are installing from a new distribution you may not have 
the necessary module, I tried both Gentoo and a RH 9 boot disk, neither 
recognized the drive while connected to the Promise Controller).

Tim's advice on dma is on the mark, set it before you get into heavy 
data transfer (if you partition it for Windows, WD has a program on 
their utility disk to accomplish the same, but get the dma on your drive 
before you accidently select a setting above your drive's capacity).

-Ron