[opensuse] how big hard drive I can use on my machine?
hi, I just bought internal 500GB ATA HD, 7200, 100MB/s for $99. am I able to use it on PIII, 677MHz, 512MB RAM, openSuse 10.2? ot, it's to big? thanks. -afan -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org
On Tuesday 24 July 2007 19:15, Afan Pasalic wrote:
hi, I just bought internal 500GB ATA HD, 7200, 100MB/s for $99. am I able to use it on PIII, 677MHz, 512MB RAM, openSuse 10.2? ot, it's to big?
thanks.
-afan
There is no too big drive. Just look to put partition that will boot computer within BIOS limitations. To check BIOS capabilities, see what size is recognized automatically. The best is as first partition after swap, to avoid headache. -- Regards, Rajko. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org
On Tuesday 24 July 2007 19:15, Afan Pasalic wrote:
hi, I just bought internal 500GB ATA HD, 7200, 100MB/s for $99. am I able to use it on PIII, 677MHz, 512MB RAM, openSuse 10.2? ot, it's to big?
thanks.
-afan
There is no too big drive. Just look to put partition that will boot computer within BIOS limitations. To check BIOS capabilities, see what size is recognized automatically. The best is as first partition after swap, to avoid headache.
-- Regards, Rajko. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org
is there any difference if I use the biggy as slave? -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org
On Tuesday 24 July 2007 19:49, afan@afan.net wrote:
On Tuesday 24 July 2007 19:15, Afan Pasalic wrote:
hi, I just bought internal 500GB ATA HD, 7200, 100MB/s for $99. am I able to use it on PIII, 677MHz, 512MB RAM, openSuse 10.2? ot, it's to big?
There is no too big drive. Just look to put partition that will boot computer within BIOS limitations. To check BIOS capabilities, see what size is recognized automatically. The best is as first partition after swap, to avoid headache.
is there any difference if I use the biggy as slave?
As accessible size there is no difference, but transfer speed is another factor to consider. I would look at the speed as primary reason where to put the drive. New drives are usually faster, though the old motherboard might have something like 66 MB/s transfer rate, so new drive wouldn't be used at it's maximum (100 or 133 MB/s). The 32 bit limit, mentioned in another post, is FAT32 file system limit and it should not be mixed with 32 bit data transfer to IDE controller on motherboard. First limit has nothing to do with file systems used in Linux. The second doesn't limit number of sectors that can be accessed on hard drive. The flat cable that connects drive to motherboard has only 16 lines for data [1]. That data can be: 1- command 2- part of sector address 3- data to store on hard disk and how hard disk will understand data, depends on status of lines on IDE bus, for 1) and later on command that was sent before data, for 2) and 3). The BIOS limitations are problem only during the boot. Grub has to use them to load the kernel. With 127 GB limit in older BIOSes you have enough space to put not one, but few partitions that can be used to load operating system, and after that whole hard disk is yours. I would simply put drive in computer and install 10.2 on it. You have the drive and asking now is a bit too late. [1] http://www.interfacebus.com/Design_Connector_IDE.html -- Regards, Rajko. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org
On Tuesday 24 July 2007 07:15:30 pm Afan Pasalic wrote:
hi, I just bought internal 500GB ATA HD, 7200, 100MB/s for $99. am I able to use it on PIII, 677MHz, 512MB RAM, openSuse 10.2? ot, it's to big?
thanks.
-afan
Doubtful Mostlikely a 677MH motherboard uses 32 bit HD addressing which is good for HD up to about 135 GB. A 500 GB HD requires 48 bit addressing. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org
On Tuesday 24 July 2007 07:15:30 pm Afan Pasalic wrote:
hi, I just bought internal 500GB ATA HD, 7200, 100MB/s for $99. am I able to use it on PIII, 677MHz, 512MB RAM, openSuse 10.2? ot, it's to big?
thanks.
-afan
Doubtful
Mostlikely a 677MH motherboard uses 32 bit HD addressing which is good for HD up to about 135 GB.
A 500 GB HD requires 48 bit addressing. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org
what would be then the "minimal requirement"? what about putting the HD to enclosure and use it with USB 2? -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org
On 7/24/07, afan@afan.net <afan@afan.net> wrote:
On Tuesday 24 July 2007 07:15:30 pm Afan Pasalic wrote:
hi, I just bought internal 500GB ATA HD, 7200, 100MB/s for $99. am I able to use it on PIII, 677MHz, 512MB RAM, openSuse 10.2? ot, it's to big?
thanks.
-afan
Doubtful
Mostlikely a 677MH motherboard uses 32 bit HD addressing which is good for HD up to about 135 GB.
A 500 GB HD requires 48 bit addressing. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org
what would be then the "minimal requirement"?
what about putting the HD to enclosure and use it with USB 2?
If you want to test your MB controller, boot from a live CD (or the suse CD in rescue mode). Then "dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/hda bs=4k" and let it run for a few hours until it finishes. (maybe overnight). Now you know the drive is empty. Put a small amount of at the start of the drive. echo "start of drive" > /dev/hda Now see what's on your drive: od -c /dev/hda It should get you a small amount of immediate output related to "start of drive", then a row of zero data, then it should appear to hang. If your controller is lba-48 capable it will hang until the entire drive full of zeros is read. No extra output because od does not show repeating data (unless you use -v). If you get a few bursts of "start of drive" spread across your drive, then you know you don't have a LBA-48 capable controller. In that case, using the external usb carrier should work. What I do is use a SIIG PCI controller (even if the MB controller is lba-48 capable). One nice thing about the SIIG is that I dual boot most of the time and the SIIG does not have windows drivers, so I either get a totally broken driver, or I get the lba-48 capable version. When using the MB controller, some windows drivers are lba-28 only!!!! I've seen several lba-48 drives be destroyed by connecting them up to a lba-28 controller/windows driver. Basically I never hook up lba-48 drives to MB controllers just because I've seen it happen too often. Greg -- Greg Freemyer The Norcross Group Forensics for the 21st Century -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org
SOTL wrote:
Doubtful Mostlikely a 677MH motherboard uses 32 bit HD addressing which is good for HD up to about 135 GB.
A 500 GB HD requires 48 bit addressing.
Linux has no problem with that - the problem might be in the BIOS. I've got a RAID1 of two 500Gb drives in a fairly ancient machine with a 633MHz Celeron, no problems whatsoever. If you need to boot from it, just make sure the first few cylinders are accessible by the BIOS. (configure the HDD to be smaller than it really is). I have quite a few older machines running with newer 40Gb drives, which are configured as having just 1024 cylinders. Boots up fine, then Linux takes over. /Per Jessen, Zürich -- http://www.spamchek.com/ - your spam is our business. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org
A 500 GB HD requires 48 bit addressing.
Linux has no problem with that - the problem might be in the BIOS. I've got a RAID1 of two 500Gb drives in a fairly ancient machine with a 633MHz Celeron, no problems whatsoever. If you need to boot from it, just make sure the first few cylinders are accessible by the BIOS. (configure the HDD to be smaller than it really is). I have quite a few older machines running with newer 40Gb drives, which are configured as having just 1024 cylinders. Boots up fine, then Linux takes over.
I can second that. A while back I set up a 386 (with a 387 math coprocessor) with Linux (long story, mostly it was an experiment to see if I could do it.. I even had it booting to KDE... about 30 minutes after powering on), and dropped a 180GB drive on it, and it worked perfectly fine (set up the same as Per described) What people often don't realize is that they associate the computer ability to "find" hard drives with the broken way Microsoft accesses the drives. Microsoft has chosen to use the BIOS layer as an intermediary between the OS and the hardware. The result is you get into the stupidity of large drives not working with Windows... and on older hardware are stuck with flashing the BIOS if there is a patch available, or running special software that runs before Windows boots up. Linux on the other hand is not so stupid and is not limited by the BIOS when it accesses the drives. The result is that you can drop large drives into old hardware that does not recognize the drive size and it'll work perfectly fine (Note: I've over simplified here.. but you get the idea I hope) C -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org
Afan Pasalic wrote:
hi, I just bought internal 500GB ATA HD, 7200, 100MB/s for $99. am I able to use it on PIII, 677MHz, 512MB RAM, openSuse 10.2? ot, it's to big?
Linux wouldn't mind, but your BIOS might. Some older BIOS just hang when it tries to detect a drive that is too big. The easies way around this is, if your BIOS allows it, to just set that drive to 'none' or not installed. This does mean you have to use it as a slave though. Linux will see the drive regardless. It gets more tricky with some BIOS (Intel and AMI comes to mind) that *always* tries to detect the drive. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org
Linux wouldn't mind, but your BIOS might. Some older BIOS just hang when it tries to detect a drive that is too big. The easies way around this is, if your BIOS allows it, to just set that drive to 'none' or not installed. This does mean you have to use it as a slave though. Linux will see the drive regardless.
Or boot from floppy... that will work if you set the drive to none in the BIOS. Linux.. so many ways to do what you want .-) Ha... C. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org
ok. it looks like it's possible and it shouldn't be a big deal. though, some modifications may apply... thanks to everyone for help. -afan koffiejunkie wrote:
Afan Pasalic wrote:
hi, I just bought internal 500GB ATA HD, 7200, 100MB/s for $99. am I able to use it on PIII, 677MHz, 512MB RAM, openSuse 10.2? ot, it's to big?
Linux wouldn't mind, but your BIOS might. Some older BIOS just hang when it tries to detect a drive that is too big. The easies way around this is, if your BIOS allows it, to just set that drive to 'none' or not installed. This does mean you have to use it as a slave though. Linux will see the drive regardless.
It gets more tricky with some BIOS (Intel and AMI comes to mind) that *always* tries to detect the drive.
-- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org
afan pasalic wrote:
ok. it looks like it's possible and it shouldn't be a big deal. though, some modifications may apply...
thanks to everyone for help.
-afan
Check your BIOS. Weather your BIOS can or cannot see the drive, it can still spoil your fun if it always tries to detect it and hangs. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org
koffiejunkie wrote:
Linux wouldn't mind, but your BIOS might. Some older BIOS just hang when it tries to detect a drive that is too big. The easies way around I ran into a few computers here at work that had that problem.
this is, if your BIOS allows it, to just set that drive to 'none' or not installed. This does mean you have to use it as a slave though. Linux I found the easiest way around the problem was to use the size limit jumper on the drive. The BIOS saw it as a small drive and didn't hang. Those computers were running Windows 95 so I still had to use the drive manager software that loads on boot. There was one strange limit to this setup. That hard drive would only report the small limited size on a cold start but not a warm start so we always had to turn off the computer to do a reboot.
Damon Register -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org
Damon Register wrote:
koffiejunkie wrote:
Linux wouldn't mind, but your BIOS might. Some older BIOS just hang when it tries to detect a drive that is too big. The easies way around I ran into a few computers here at work that had that problem.
this is, if your BIOS allows it, to just set that drive to 'none' or not installed. This does mean you have to use it as a slave though. Linux I found the easiest way around the problem was to use the size limit jumper on the drive. The BIOS saw it as a small drive and didn't hang.
That's another way, of course, but then you lose the additional space. Plus, if we're talking about really old machines, like many Pentiums, the 33gb limit jumper won't do you much good if the machine cannot see past 8gb... -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org
Afan Pasalic wrote:
hi, I just bought internal 500GB ATA HD, 7200, 100MB/s for $99. am I able to use it on PIII, 677MHz, 512MB RAM, openSuse 10.2? ot, it's to big?
thanks.
-afan
Jumping in here late, but for my older machine, I just bought a cheap IDE card and it worked like a champ. Even if it sees it, it probably won't be UDMA-100, so it'll be really slow. Get a replacement IDE card and openSUSE will work like a charm, like a Promise or Adaptec. -- Jonathan Arnold (mailto:jdarnold@buddydog.org) Daemon Dancing in the Dark, an Open OS weblog: http://freebsd.amazingdev.com/blog/ UNIX is user-friendly. It's just a bit picky about who its friends are. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org
On 2007/08/10 10:38 (GMT-0400) Jonathan Arnold apparently typed:
Afan Pasalic wrote:
I just bought internal 500GB ATA HD, 7200, 100MB/s for $99. am I able to use it on PIII, 677MHz, 512MB RAM, openSuse 10.2? ot, it's to big?
Jumping in here late, but for my older machine, I just bought a cheap IDE card and it worked like a champ. Even if it sees it, it probably won't be UDMA-100, so it'll be really slow.
It won't be slow enough for most people to notice. PIII 667 has a 133 MHz FSB with at least UDMA66, possibly UDMA-100. Most UDMA-100 devices can't saturate the bus, so the difference between UDMA66 and UDMA-100 is generally hard to detect, and in any event is not "really slow" or even "slow". "Slow" is UDMA33 or worse. OTOH, on a machine old enough to be running a 667 class CPU the BIOS might not be able to handle it, in which case either it would have to be a non-boot device, or else connected to an add-in card. -- " It is impossible to rightly govern the world without God and the Bible." George Washington Team OS/2 ** Reg. Linux User #211409 Felix Miata *** http://mrmazda.no-ip.com/ -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org
participants (12)
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Afan Pasalic -
afan pasalic
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afan＠afan.net
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Clayton -
Damon Register -
Felix Miata -
Greg Freemyer -
Jonathan Arnold -
koffiejunkie -
Per Jessen -
Rajko M. -
SOTL