250GB hd: Can FreeBSD use 137GB (bios) as Linux or Windows do?
Yesterday, I wrote about CANNOT READ BLK from my new hd that I filled via firewire: http://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-questions/2008-July/179646.html The response suggested to check for faulty hardware, which I am still trying to do. I found FreeBSD reporting the drive to have 128GB instead of 232GB as FreeBSD did when the drive was connected via firewire. Searching the web, I found one reference of someone else having problems with 128/137GB using the same (latest) bios on this five year old (Centrino) laptop (Acer TM800). From Western Digital, I got Lifeguard, which installed ddo (dynamic drive overlay). With ddo, FreeBSD can access the full drive. Unfortunately, I need to dual boot Windows XP, which seems to be impossible with the ddo MBR. Anyhow, both Linux (Knoppix, 2.6.24) and Windows XP (SP3) can access the whole drive without ddo. With Linux, I checked that I can indeed write and read high sectors. Thus, it is only the bios, not the controller that is limiting lba48 access. (At least with the geometry the disk reports.) Is there any way to have FreeBSD access the whole drive without ddo, too? If that is not possible, can you think of any way to load ddo only for FreeBSD, but have Windows XP started with a regular MBR? I am not sure, why the ddo MBR does not boot Windows XP, but since Windows XP does not need it and ddo is not supported in dual boot environments, I guess I cannot complain. Thanks a lot for any hint, Jan Henrik ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: 250GB hd: Can FreeBSD use 137GB (bios) as Linux or Windows do?
On 7/31/08, [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Yesterday, I wrote about CANNOT READ BLK from my new hd that I filled via firewire: http://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-questions/2008-July/179646.html The response suggested to check for faulty hardware, which I am still trying to do. I found FreeBSD reporting the drive to have 128GB instead of 232GB as FreeBSD did when the drive was connected via firewire. Searching the web, I found one reference of someone else having problems with 128/137GB using the same (latest) bios on this five year old (Centrino) laptop (Acer TM800). FreeBSD has no such limit, at least not in recent versions (I'm using a 200 GB drive at this moment, and at home I have a system with a 500 GB and a 750 GB drive). Your problem is caused either by the BIOS lying to it (which is unlikely, because FreeBSD uses the BIOS value only for initial booting), or the hard drive itself lying. Does your drive have a jumper that causes it to report its capacity as 128GB for compatibility with older BIOSes? If so, remove the jumper and try again. -- Bob Johnson [EMAIL PROTECTED] ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: 250GB hd: Can FreeBSD use 137GB (bios) as Linux or Windows do?
On 7/31/08, [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Yesterday, I wrote about CANNOT READ BLK from my new hd that I filled via firewire: http://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-questions/2008-July/179646.html The response suggested to check for faulty hardware, which I am still trying to do. I found FreeBSD reporting the drive to have 128GB instead of 232GB as FreeBSD did when the drive was connected via firewire. Searching the web, I found one reference of someone else having problems with 128/137GB using the same (latest) bios on this five year old (Centrino) laptop (Acer TM800). FreeBSD has no such limit, at least not in recent versions (I'm using a 200 GB drive at this moment, and at home I have a system with a 500 GB and a 750 GB drive). Your problem is caused either by the BIOS I never said FreeBSD had a limit. With ddo, it works. (I am on 7.0.) lying to it (which is unlikely, because FreeBSD uses the BIOS value Yes, it is the bios. With ddo, the full disk is available; ddo supposingly does nothing but change the bios interrupt handlers. only for initial booting), or the hard drive itself lying. Does your Are you sure about only for initial booting? If that was the case, I would not understand why it shows ad0: 238475MB with ddo and ad0: 131072MB without. Moreover, I tried writing to a sector beyond 128GB unsuccessfully without ddo and successfully with ddo (using dd). drive have a jumper that causes it to report its capacity as 128GB for compatibility with older BIOSes? If so, remove the jumper and try again. These is no such jumper. With Linux and Windows seeing the correct size (without ddo), the drive must report it somehow correctly. Either your claim that FreeBSD is not relying on the bios is wrong, or I understand even less about the interaction of bios, drive, ddo handler, and os than I thought I would. (Please, enlighten me, if you know more.) Thanks for your input! Cheers, Jan Henrik ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: 250GB hd: Can FreeBSD use 137GB (bios) as Linux or Windows do?
On 7/31/08, Jan Henrik Sylvester [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On 7/31/08, [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Yesterday, I wrote about CANNOT READ BLK from my new hd that I filled via firewire: http://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-questions/2008-July/179646.html The response suggested to check for faulty hardware, which I am still trying to do. I found FreeBSD reporting the drive to have 128GB instead of 232GB as FreeBSD did when the drive was connected via firewire. Searching the web, I found one reference of someone else having problems with 128/137GB using the same (latest) bios on this five year old (Centrino) laptop (Acer TM800). I don't know how long ago the ATA-6 specification was adopted, but prior to that ATA-5 had a 128 GB limit on disk size. I suspect your BIOS is old enough to have adopted that limit. Perhaps if a BIOS update for your system is available, it will solve your problem. BUT, my understanding is that after the initial boot, FreeBSD reads the size directly from the drive, so it seems strange that you are encountering this problem if the drive itself is correctly reporting its size. Anyway, the fundamental answer to your question is this should not be happening. The challenge is to figure out where the problem is and what to do about it. FreeBSD has no such limit, at least not in recent versions (I'm using a 200 GB drive at this moment, and at home I have a system with a 500 GB and a 750 GB drive). Your problem is caused either by the BIOS I never said FreeBSD had a limit. With ddo, it works. (I am on 7.0.) lying to it (which is unlikely, because FreeBSD uses the BIOS value Yes, it is the bios. With ddo, the full disk is available; ddo supposingly does nothing but change the bios interrupt handlers. only for initial booting), or the hard drive itself lying. Does your Are you sure about only for initial booting? If that was the case, I would not understand why it shows ad0: 238475MB with ddo and ad0: 131072MB without. Moreover, I tried writing to a sector beyond 128GB unsuccessfully without ddo and successfully with ddo (using dd). I am quite certain, although I don't know the details. Like any modern operating system (and since before some of them), FreeBSD asks the drive for its size. drive have a jumper that causes it to report its capacity as 128GB for compatibility with older BIOSes? If so, remove the jumper and try again. These is no such jumper. With Linux and Windows seeing the correct size (without ddo), the drive must report it somehow correctly. Either your claim that FreeBSD is not relying on the bios is wrong, or I understand even less about the interaction of bios, drive, ddo handler, and os than I thought I would. (Please, enlighten me, if you know more.) I think it would be informative to do as someone suggested after your first post, and re-install FreeBSD on the partition from scratch, to see if it that solves the behavior problems. It could be an artifact of your transfer method, although I don't have a specific theory to explain it. By the way, what version of FreeBSD is on the system? Any chance it is old enough that it didn't support drives larger than 128 GB (I don't know how old that would have to be)? That might include a bug in an IDE driver that has since been fixed, or an obscure default configuration option that changes FreeBSD's idea of how to address a drive. Another thought is that if you aren't using the FreeBSD loader (MBR), then your problems may be caused by the loader. You could test this by installing the FreeBSD disk loader (I think that would be boot0cfg -B ad0, but I might not have that right). Is there any chance the MS-DOS partition table got changed at some point to tell FreeBSD the partition is smaller than the BSD label says it is? Thanks for your input! Good luck. - Bob ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: 250GB hd: Can FreeBSD use 137GB (bios) as Linux or Windows do?
I guess I should have put it more concise as some important details were lost in the middle of the background story. --- The important part: --- If I boot the FreeBSD 7.0-RELEASE livefs CD, I have my 232GB hd limited to 128GB. (According to dmesg and some dd writing tests.) If I boot the dynamic drive overlay MBR that changes the INT13 bios routines and let it boot the livefs CD, FreeBSD can access all 232GB. These two cases happen with the same MBR and the same content on the drive. --- (Important part ending) --- From my limited understanding: This cannot be about the FreeBSD installation transfered by firewire, since it is long gone. This cannot be about the FreeBSD MBR, since it is not involved. This is not about the partition table, since it is the same. Doing the same with a Linux live CD (Knoppix), I can access the whole drive in both cases. Windows reports 232GB, too, but according to this (German) posting http://www.acer-userforum.de/thread.php?postid=40207 writing above 128GB will wrap around for the 855GME chipset driver (I have 855PM). The posting claims ddo would solve it, which I cannot understand, if the Windows driver ignores the bios information. (The posting is about Acer Travelmate 661. I got the 800 from the same time.) My laptop is more than five years old and I have got the latest bios for years, apparently without 48bit LBA. I am kind of lost. I cannot understand the disassembled MBR and even if I could, I do not think I would want to create my own boot manager / INT13 handler. I guess reading FreeBSD source code would be next... but I am not very confident there, either. The alternative is that my understanding of the problem is totally wrong. Thanks for more helping to think through this mess of information I got during the last day. Cheers, Jan Henrik ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: 250GB hd: Can FreeBSD use 137GB (bios) as Linux or Windows do?
On 7/31/08, Jan Henrik Sylvester [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I guess I should have put it more concise as some important details were lost in the middle of the background story. --- The important part: --- If I boot the FreeBSD 7.0-RELEASE livefs CD, I have my 232GB hd limited to 128GB. (According to dmesg and some dd writing tests.) If I boot the dynamic drive overlay MBR that changes the INT13 bios routines and let it boot the livefs CD, FreeBSD can access all 232GB. These two cases happen with the same MBR and the same content on the drive. --- (Important part ending) --- From my limited understanding: This cannot be about the FreeBSD installation transfered by firewire, since it is long gone. This cannot be about the FreeBSD MBR, since it is not involved. This is not about the partition table, since it is the same. It CAN be about the partition table, at least in principle, although I'd think that if the dmesg says the drive is 128 GB that's probably not what is happening. An invalid partition table can be interpreted differently by different systems (I know that from painful experience), and of course, by different releases of FreeBSD. And Vista in particular seems to like to do strange things to partition tables, FWIW. Doing the same with a Linux live CD (Knoppix), I can access the whole drive in both cases. Windows reports 232GB, too, but according to this (German) posting http://www.acer-userforum.de/thread.php?postid=40207 writing above 128GB will wrap around for the 855GME chipset driver (I have 855PM). The posting claims ddo would solve it, which I cannot understand, if the Windows driver ignores the bios information. (The posting is about Acer Travelmate 661. I got the 800 from the same time.) My laptop is more than five years old and I have got the latest bios for years, apparently without 48bit LBA. I am kind of lost. I cannot understand the disassembled MBR and even if I could, I do not think I would want to create my own boot manager / INT13 handler. I guess reading FreeBSD source code would be next... but I am not very confident there, either. The alternative is that my understanding of the problem is totally wrong. Thanks for more helping to think through this mess of information I got during the last day. FreeBSD has to make some educated guesses about what disk geometry to assume: it has to try to make assumptions that will be compatible with what other operating systems are likely to do, so at times it is possible that it will opt for something safe but not right in order to balance conflicting information it gets from the BIOS, the partition table, and the drive itself. That's why you have the option of changing its assumptions when you do a sysinstall. What the livefs cd does, I do not know, but the only way you will know what would happen if you installed FreeBSD on, and boot from, that hard drive will be to actually install FreeBSD on that hard drive and see what happens. The one thing I am certain of is that it should have no problem booting from and using a 232 GB drive. - Bob ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
