[svlug] svlug Digest, Vol 307, Issue 28

[bruce coston]

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Today's Topics:

   1. Large HD running with old BIOS (Mark)
   2. Re: Large HD running with old BIOS (Rick Moen)
   3. Re: Software Raid 1 on different size disks? (Tim Moore)
From: "Mark" <msalists at gmx.net>
Subject: [svlug] Large HD running with old BIOS
Date: Wed, 15 Mar 2006 12:24:37 -0800
To: "'SVLUG'" <svlug at lists.svlug.org>

 Hi again,

I have a new 300 GB Seagate IDE hard disk. Most of my computers are having problems recognizing it.
Some recognize it as a smaller size, other not at all.
A relatively new Dell PE600SC recognizes it when it is plugged into the first controller as master, but not as slave, and not as
master on the second controller either.
I also have another HD that is 120GB and plugged it into an old box that could not detect the proper size in the BIOS, but Fedora
boots and runs off it (apparently without problems) nevertheless.

So I am wondering if what the mainboard BIOS detects matters at all, or if it's really just a matter of whether or not the OS driver
is able to handle the drive.
Do I risk data loss running a hard disk that is not properly recognized by the BIOS?

Thanks,

MARK



From: Rick Moen <rick at linuxmafia.com>
Subject: Re: [svlug] Large HD running with old BIOS
Date: Wed, 15 Mar 2006 14:29:40 -0800
To: svlug at lists.svlug.org

 Quoting Mark (msalists at gmx.net):

> So I am wondering if what the mainboard BIOS detects matters at all,
> or if it's really just a matter of whether or not the OS driver is
> able to handle the drive.  Do I risk data loss running a hard disk
> that is not properly recognized by the BIOS?

Once the Linux kernel is running on a machine, it no longer needs to
rely on the BIOS for hard drive information, if it did at boot time at
all.  (The kernel's fairly sophisticated about how it susses out ATA
aka IDE HDs; the Large Disk HOWTO has details.)  You can even pass the
booting kernel explicit HD geometry information for a particular drive,
implicitly saying "absolutely ignore the BIOS; it's misinformed".

So, basically, no, once the booting kernel has, by any of its several
avenues for information, figured out (or been told explicitly) a drive's
geometry (with BIOS data being only one of those, and not necessarily
trusted), there's no particular risk of data loss.  Until it _does_ know
that information, on the other hand, you basically can't mount anything
and so are unlikely to lose data that way, either.

Of course, it can be really handy to have functional BIOS support for
your boot drive.  ;->My abit be6 r2 slot 1 board , 443 440bx , does not handle drives .gt. 128g properly. But we got the last partition starting at 127g working with a 180g drive
.  We did a bios update and I know Daniel found a non-maker update that gets beyond that limit. I don't remember ever doing the latter update and $0 after rebate says the 80g drive there now is fine. Ricks suggestion also works. My socket A board gets beyond 130g fine so you might consider a now-cheap motherboard upgrade because sometimes newer hardware makes more sense than elaborate administration measures.

		
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