On Sunday, 31 October 2004 15.13, Dylan wrote:

On Sunday 31 Oct 2004 14:57 pm, James Knott wrote:

...

Synthetic Cartoonz wrote:

...

Stupid question time. I could not find anything related in the FAQ or the hardware database online.

Is the 128G (or 137G if you count like a hard drive manufacturer) ATA hard drive limitation a problem with the interface hardware or the software driver?

So, if I get a 250G hard drive can I expect SuSE 9.2 to be able to use all of it?

On the assumption this is an interface problem is there a list of supported ATA interfaces/chipsets that SuSE 9.2 can use?

That's a hard limit, unless the inteface changes to include more than 28 sector address bits.

If this is the case, how can manufacturers justify producing "250MB" IDE ATA dives?

I have no problems with a parallell ATA 160GB drive, is this 128GB limit for serial ATA?

On Sun, 31 Oct 2004 16:21:37 +0200, Anders Johansson wrote:

On Sunday, 31 October 2004 15.13, Dylan wrote:

...

On Sunday 31 Oct 2004 14:57 pm, James Knott wrote:

...

Synthetic Cartoonz wrote:

...

Stupid question time. I could not find anything related in the FAQ or the hardware database online.

Is the 128G (or 137G if you count like a hard drive manufacturer) ATA hard drive limitation a problem with the interface hardware or the software driver?

So, if I get a 250G hard drive can I expect SuSE 9.2 to be able to use all of it?

On the assumption this is an interface problem is there a list of supported ATA interfaces/chipsets that SuSE 9.2 can use?

That's a hard limit, unless the inteface changes to include more than 28 sector address bits.

If this is the case, how can manufacturers justify producing "250MB" IDE ATA dives?

I have no problems with a parallell ATA 160GB drive, is this 128GB limit for serial ATA?

From what I have seen, if you have a ATA-100 controller, you will be

It is a ATA limit with both drivers and controller chips. limited to 128/137 GB. If you have a ATA-133 controller/drivers, you can see all of larger drives. I have tried several different ATA-133 controllers, linux has supported them all. (Even older versions like SuSE 8.0). Windows 2K needs extra drivers loaded. :) FYI: I saw a dos-booted system that claimed to see a full 250GB SATA drive. As soon as the drive usage went past 128/137 GB, the drive "crashed". I was just observing, so I did not have the chance to test anything, but I suspect something in the dos driver wrapped and the filesystem became corrupted. Greg -- Greg Freemyer

Anders wrote regarding 'Re: [SLE] Hard drive limitations' on Sun, Oct 31 at 08:21:

On Sunday, 31 October 2004 15.13, Dylan wrote:

...

On Sunday 31 Oct 2004 14:57 pm, James Knott wrote:

...

Synthetic Cartoonz wrote:

...

Stupid question time. I could not find anything related in the FAQ or the hardware database online.

Is the 128G (or 137G if you count like a hard drive manufacturer) ATA hard drive limitation a problem with the interface hardware or the software driver?

So, if I get a 250G hard drive can I expect SuSE 9.2 to be able to use all of it?

On the assumption this is an interface problem is there a list of supported ATA interfaces/chipsets that SuSE 9.2 can use?

That's a hard limit, unless the inteface changes to include more than 28 sector address bits.

If this is the case, how can manufacturers justify producing "250MB" IDE ATA dives?

I have no problems with a parallell ATA 160GB drive, is this 128GB limit for serial ATA?

It's a limit for old IDE controllers. ATA/ATAPI 6 (which is the 100MB/s standard, AKA UDMA/100 or ATA/100) expanded LBA from 28 bits to 48 bits. The old 28-bit LBA limited drives to 137GB, but anyone with a 100MB/s or faster controller should be able to use the new big ATA drives. --Danny