No, that is not how it works. If you were using DOS, and possibly Windows 95, you would have problems. But you would have problems accessing the USB drive in the first place, so we will not worry about that. Linux does not have problems with a drive with more then 1024 cylinders. So you can use fdisk to change the partition type to 83, and then run mke2fs to put the new file system on the drive. As I said when I outlined how to do this, you will lose any information that is already one the drive, so make sure you have it backed up.Well, fdisk could "see" the /dev/sda1 but report this :
-- [EMAIL PROTECTED] kaj]# fdisk /dev/sda1
The number of cylinders for this disk is set to 19928. There is nothing wrong with that, but this is larger than 1024, and could in certain setups cause problems with: 1) software that runs at boot time (e.g., old versions of LILO) 2) booting and partitioning software from other OSs (e.g., DOS FDISK, OS/2 FDISK)
So, as I understand it, there's no idea in having a 160 GB disk when only a 5% of it is usable...
Kaj Haulrich.
--
*Sent from a 100 % Microsoft-free workstation*
*Running Linux Mandrake 10.1*
If you want to make sure you can restore the partition table, for what ever reasion, you could run "dd if=/dev/sda of=USB_mbr count=1" to save the current MBR and partition table.
The problem that fdisk is talking about had to do with older BIOS that could not access more then 1024 cylinders. The way we used to get around that was to have a /boot partition that was below that limit to hold the kernel, and inital RAM disk. That way, lilo could load the kernel using the BIOS, and then the kernel could access the entire drive. When you were dual booting, you also put Windows at the front of the drive.
/boot Windows / Swap /home
Or something like that. Windows and /boot were below the 1024 limit. We didn't worry about where the rest of the Linux install was.
Mikkel --
Do not meddle in the affairs of dragons, for you are crunchy and taste good with Ketchup!
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