Topic: Large IDE drives

[Per Sorensen]

Does anyone have experience running SME 5 on a large IDE hard drive, using the manufacturers software, to override the BIOS limitations? Any DO's and DONT's?

Per

[Ari]

There really shouldn't be a need for the manufacturer's software... in the BIOS, make sure that the hdd is set to NORMAL and all should go well.

Ari

[Per Sorensen]

Does that mean that the limitations are only related to DOS - Windows?

Per

[chris meredith]

Any relatively new Motherboard should support up to 120G Hardrive.  If you have something older that doesn't it might be worth it to pick up a DMA 100/133 controller.  You can get a generic controller card or even a RAID card for $20-$30.

Something like this:
http://www.compgeeks.com/details.asp?invtid=PCIATA133-NB

Before you buy a controller you will want to check Linux 2.2 kernel compatibility.

I wouldn't recommend running a production server with any of that manufacturer BIOS bypass crap.  It might work, but I would avoid it.

[guck puppy]

Per, what kind of motherboard do you have - or rather, how old is it?

I think you are referring to old pentium 1 (and below) motherboards with the 2.1GB limit for drives (What I am running right now in fact - an old gateway P90 with 2x2.1GB drives)

Western Digital included a copy of EZ-Drive (from Micro House, it seems) with some of their drives that would get around the limitations of the bios (amongst other things).

As Chris says, using it just adds another potential area of trouble you can do without for a prodcution server. More justification from firmware.com :
"this adds complexity to the already extremely complex matrix of hardware and software involved in a PC system. It would also involve setting the system up in non-standard ways."
and notes :
"Since both Disk Manager and EZ-Drive install onto the boot sector of the hard drive, they cannot be removed simply by reformatting the drive" - I don't know how linux would interact with something like this being installed on the boot sector...? (sort of answer :
http://www.patoche.org/LTT/install/00000117.html )

Phoenix Technologies, the new owners of EZ-Drive etc. rebut and say good things about their tech at :
http://www.phoenix.com/en/products/drive+utilities/ezbios.htm

Chris, when you suggest buying a new hard-drive controller - wouldn't any bios limitation still have an effect on such hardware?

If not, it might be worth my while as I have access to some larger drives - larger than I thought I could access with my hardware...

Cheers,

G
Other Links :
More information about the whole drive size / motherboard issue at :
http://www.win.tue.nl/~aeb/linux/Large-Disk-4.html

[Tom Keiser]

The limitation is in the motherboard's bios and does not pertain specifically to DOS / Windows.

I do *NOT* know of any ATA-100 add-in controller cards that have any drivers for Linux, so you are stuck with replacing your motherboard with something new, and preferably, from a good manufacturer with a modern bios.

Someone else may know of such a card, but I've never seen one.

Regards,

Tom Keiser

[Ray Mitchell]

Dear Per & all

What's wrong with upgrading the BIOS on the motherboard. I know that some systems cannot be flash upgraded, but have you tried finding the right BIOS upgrade for your motherboard ? There is a lot of stuff at manufactureres web sites.
Look on your mother board for the "real" manufactureres name, not necessarily the same as the PC brand, or look at the BIOS screen that appears at startup for version numbers etc, then search the Internet.

I have flash upgraded the BIOS on a couple of 4 yr old Pentium II machines and they now happily boot up to and support 80Gb drives  running sme 5.1.2 in RAID1.

Unfortunately, PC's earlier than this may not have BIOS upgrades available !!

Ray Mitchell

[trevorb]

Seagate have a reasonable description of the types of problems associated with big disks on older bioses at http://www.seagate.com/support/kb/disc/bioslmt.html

It will suggest their DiskWizard software (which I use on my 40GB drive on an older Pentium 1 without a 'soft' bios upgrade option). Other manufacturers (eg. IBM) have similar software that also works.

FWIW
Trevor B

Ray Mitchell wrote:
>
> Dear Per & all
>
> What's wrong with upgrading the BIOS on the motherboard. I
> know that some systems cannot be flash upgraded, but have you
> tried finding the right BIOS upgrade for your motherboard ?
> There is a lot of stuff at manufactureres web sites.
> Look on your mother board for the "real" manufactureres name,
> not necessarily the same as the PC brand, or look at the BIOS
> screen that appears at startup for version numbers etc, then
> search the Internet.
>
> I have flash upgraded the BIOS on a couple of 4 yr old
> Pentium II machines and they now happily boot up to and
> support 80Gb drives  running sme 5.1.2 in RAID1.
>
> Unfortunately, PC's earlier than this may not have BIOS
> upgrades available !!
>
> Ray Mitchell

[Per Sorensen]

Hmm, i didn't think my Q would have so many answers

I am not running any productionserver, it's only for home use and access to my files when i'm traveling in my job. So it still have to be stable.

My MB is an ASUS P2L97 300Mhz PII, it has an ATA33 controller. I always thought that i could only use max 20G drives on that. But on your answers i can see that some are running 80G drives.

When the BIOS setting is set to NORMAL, is there not such a limit then? Or is the BIOS overrided by Linux itself?

I simply want to be sure before i blow my budget and by a couple of 80G for a RAID (software) solution.

Per

[Per Sorensen]

I have now done some studying on the net based on all the answers, and things are a lot clearer to me now. My MB alllready have the right BIOS ver. flashed, so i will be able to run HD over 32Gb.

Thanks for all the input to everybody.

Per

[Ray Mitchell]

Per
That sounds like the same Mb I had in one of the PC's and I did need to flash the BIOS for it to recognise the 80Gb drives, so if your bios is already OK, great.
Enjoy
Ray

[Italo]

Hi Per,

I just wanted to add my experience with the same mobo. When I installed a 60GB maxtor drive I encountered the problem of disk size, but it took only a minute to fetch the latest bios from the ASUS download pages (www.asus.com, always very slow) and flash the bios with it. They have clear instructions on how to do it, what you need (Flash.exe and something else) in order to flash the bios, and what the upgrades are. Then you should be able to install any size hd, or at least up to 120GB.
Enjoy,
/Italo

[Per Sorensen]

As soon as i get my drives, in a couple of days, i will post the outcome here.

[Dub Dublin]

A little more info, FWIW:

Systems built before around 1998 (the exact date varies with the manufacturer/BIOS) are generally not capable of supporting disks larger than 32 GB.

This exact thing is stopping me from using a nice, small, FIC Sahara II as an SME server right now.  

In a nutshell, here's what you can do:

1.  Forget the drive extension programs - I've yet to find one that works with Linux - they all assume Windows.

2. If possible, upgrade the BIOS to a newer version that supports larger drives.  As in my case, though, this is often not possible.

3. The last wasy to salvage the box and avoid having to buy something newer is pretty straightforward:  Just buy a nice, new IDE drive controller and use that instead of the one on the motherboard, which is the one your BIOS is having problems with.  The PCI card has its own BIOS which will define the capabilities of the interfaces it provides.  To make this work optimally, your BIOS should give you the option to disable the onboard disk controller.  If you can do that, all should be well.   It may work OK even if you can't, but you'll just have to gamble $30 or so on a new IDE controller and see for yourself.

HTH,

Dub Dublin

[Tom Keiser]

And what controller do you recommend that works with kernel 2.2.19?


Dub Dublin wrote:
>
> A little more info, FWIW:
>
> Systems built before around 1998 (the exact date varies with
> the manufacturer/BIOS) are generally not capable of
> supporting disks larger than 32 GB.
>
> This exact thing is stopping me from using a nice, small, FIC
> Sahara II as an SME server right now.
>
> In a nutshell, here's what you can do:
>
> 1.  Forget the drive extension programs - I've yet to find
> one that works with Linux - they all assume Windows.
>
> 2. If possible, upgrade the BIOS to a newer version that
> supports larger drives.  As in my case, though, this is often
> not possible.
>
> 3. The last wasy to salvage the box and avoid having to buy
> something newer is pretty straightforward:  Just buy a nice,
> new IDE drive controller and use that instead of the one on
> the motherboard, which is the one your BIOS is having
> problems with.  The PCI card has its own BIOS which will
> define the capabilities of the interfaces it provides.  To
> make this work optimally, your BIOS should give you the
> option to disable the onboard disk controller.  If you can do
> that, all should be well.   It may work OK even if you can't,
> but you'll just have to gamble $30 or so on a new IDE
> controller and see for yourself.
>
> HTH,
>
> Dub Dublin