On Wed, 21 Nov 2001, Edenyard wrote: > Can anyone set me straight on the situation regarding large HDs and > (early) BIOS limitations? I seem to remember a limit of 8.4Gb for 486 > and early 586 BIOSes, but does that mean that HDs > 8.4Gb won't work at > all on these motherboards, or will the space above 8.4Gb just be > unreachable?
Linux doesn't use the BIOS for determining HD type/size, so the limit for ATA IDE drives is 137GB regardless of BIOS used. Pre-2.0.34 kernels had an 8GB limit by default, but *could* be worked around with some fancy footwork in a kernel module. Very few people are running that old of a kernel today, so practically speaking the "large disk problem" doesn't exist for linux. If you'd like to read about the whys and wherefores of all that, see http://linux.wuxi.net.cn/ehowto/largedisk/Large-Disk.html > but this is going to be for Linux mainly, so the possibility of > using a DOS driver doesn't exist. Partition your drive with Linux fdisk (or I suppose partition magic would work too). Create a DOS partition of whatever size you wish less than 8GB, and you're all set. I have a 40GB drive with a 500 MB DOS partition at /dev/hda1. I haven't booted to DOS in... many months, but last time I was there, it worked fine. ;-) - Steve
