> Mark H. Mabry wrote: > I'm having a problem partitioning my 9.6 GB harddrive on my Dell P-II > 400. This is an EIDE drive. When I use cfdisk, it sees only 8 GB. > I believe that this is due to a limit in cfdisk which sets the max > number of sectors to 1024. Mine should have 1227 (approx). > > When I boot Linux it identifies my hard drive and says it has 9.6 GB. > Also, when I used Partition Magic to reformat my windoze 95 area, it > saw all of my disk. > > I am running linux 2.0.34, cfdisk 0.8l (from util-linux-2.8), on > Debian 1.3.1r8. > > Is this a program limitation? Is there a workaround? Is there > another program for Linux that I could use? > > Any and all help is much appreciated. > > Mark Mabry > [EMAIL PROTECTED]
1024 is the maximum number of cylinders that may be stored in a partition table entry (10 bits). 1024 is also the maximum cylinder that can addressed using the standard BIOS routines. (With a tranlating BIOS this limits you to 8 GB, with an old BIOS the limit was 504 MB). Fortunately Linux doesn't use the BIOS functions to talk to the disk or use the CYL/HEAD/SECT addresses in the partition table to locate partitions. You can tell Linux that you've got more cylinders with the hd=cyls,heads,sects boot option. (cfdisk will ask the kernel for the disk geometry. You can also tell cfdisk that you've got more than 1024 cylinders with the -c option. See the man page.) Make sure the number of heads and sectors match the numbers used by the BIOS. One note: Since most (all?) boot managers use the BIOS to load the OS, you should make sure the kernel stays under the 8 GB limit by having your root partition lie entirely under the 8 GB limit. (With an old, non- translating BIOS this limit is only 504 MB.) How do you know if you have a translating BIOS? If you can make a partition greater than 504 MB under DOS, you've got one. See the following for detailed info: 1) Large-Disk mini HOWTO 2) cfdisk man page 3) BootPrompt HOWTO for info on hd=cyls,heads,sects Good luck! Tony Richardson -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
