From: hns@regent.e-technik.tu-muenchen.dbp.de (Henning Spruth) Subject: Re: Linux on ESDI-drive over 1024cyl? Date: Mon, 8 Feb 1993 14:59:45 GMT
hogan@marie.physik.tu-berlin.de (Tuukka Uusheimo) writes:
>In <1993Feb5.201322.21510@tdb.uu.se> t92oti@tdb.uu.se (Oscar Tiger) writes:
>>Sure. I'm running linux on a ESDI ~650 MB with a Western Digital WD1007
>>No problems with the disc just go ahead!
>Yup! I also have now installed Linux on my "new" ESDI 250MB drive. I only
>have one problem! It gives out these errors every now and then... (Original
>eh?) I cannot remembet the exact error message, but I think it is complaining
>about cylinder number being too high!!! Is it possible, that Linux does NOT
>support HDs with over 1024 cylinders???
>My HD is: 1214c, 12h, 35s... Yes, these are the physical values. I could
>configure it to 491-12-63, but that would mean decrease on capasity. From
>250MB to 240Mb, and I want to keep the extra 10MB... Or I could jumper the
>controller to break the disk in to virtual drives, but I would also like to
>have my ATID as second drive, so I think this is out of question...
I'm running linux on a 1200-or-so track ESDI drive with an Adaptec 2320A
(no sector remapping), and **yes**, you **can** use the tracks >1024 under
linux. However, you have to pay some special considerations:
- use a DOS tool to format the extra tracks (I think superstor works)
- create a partition at the end of the disk (e.g. 800-1023)
- make a linux filesystem in that partition, but specify a block count
that is so large that the extra cylinders >1024 will be included in the
filesystem
- ** important **
you can't use the 'high' partition for booting using lilo. I did it, and
it worked fine, but after some weeks of usage (and several new kernels),
the newer kernels won't boot any more because they were stored at cylinder
>1024 where the boot loader (which uses the BIOS, remember) can't access them.
Therefore, you have to use a separate root partition at <1024.
Henning