Date: Sat, 28 Jan 2006 13:35:46 -0800 From: John Martin <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: RE: [LIB] Toshiba 100GB HD review
Thank you for clarifying RM... I think I read about what you described. The bios of the Libretto can't see the disks larger than 128/137, but even if you get around that with some sort of translating software, Windows 98, which is what most older Librettos are running, doesn't support the larger drives anyway, or at least not without some modifications. Seeing as Windows 98 is not really supported by Microsoft anymore anyway, it is unlikely adding such would have any positive effects of the stability of the OS anyway. (Seeing as Win9X aren't very reliable on any hard drive regardless of size, <G>) I just started wondering and decided to ask the question when David mentioned the 160GB Seagate 2.5... Thanks, : ) John Martin ================================ ---------- From: Richard Mittendorfer [SMTP:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Saturday, January 28, 2006 10:39 AM To: Libretto Subject: Re: [LIB] Toshiba 100GB HD review Date: Sat, 28 Jan 2006 19:38:09 +0100 From: Richard Mittendorfer <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Re: [LIB] Toshiba 100GB HD review Also sprach John Martin <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> (Sat, 28 Jan 2006 09:35:11 -0800): > Date: Sat, 28 Jan 2006 11:31:38 -0800 > From: John Martin <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > Subject: RE: [LIB] Toshiba 100GB HD review > > I do not run linux, I run Windows 98SE as it is required for > compatibility by my profession. > So, will a Libretto 100/110CT running Windows 98SE be able to see all > of a hard drive larger than 128GB? I don't know, but AFAIK it sees what it get's from BIOS. And the Libretto BIOS will not see the whole disk (INT13 limitations). So you will need some kind of bootmanager, which will pass the right table to the OS, I've heard about such a thing, but can't name one. Hope, google will help. I doubt that W98 can _handle_ disks greater 128GiB/137.4GB(SI norm). IIRC 48bit LBA(?) first came with ServicePack1 to XP. Linux since 2.4.19 can handle them. It also doesn't read the BIOS, so the INT13 limit doesn't show up. > I am almost certain I understood the 128GB limitation to be hardware, > not software, so in that case the operating system, linux as well as Both i think. > Windows, would be secondary as far as translation. I also realize > that if the hardware of the day didn't support such drive sizes, it > is likely the software addressing and interpretation would also not > have been present in the OS's of that time period. I realize also > that some people have Windows 2000 working on older Librettos and of > course many Librettos shipped with NT, but I don't believe these OS's > look at drives the same as the older Windows versions. > Anyone care to expand on this? The old ATA standard has a 137.4 GB limit. It's gone with ATA-6. -------8<------- The old ATA standard describes how to address a sector on an IDE disk using 28 bits (8 bits for the sector, 4 for the head, 16 for the cylinder). This means that an IDE disk can have at most 2^28 addressable sectors With 512-byte sectors this is 2^37 bytes, that is, 137.4 GB. The ATA-6 standard includes a specification how to address past this 2^28 sector boundary. The new standard allows addressing of 2^48 sectors. There is support in recent Linux kernels that have incorporated Andre Hedrick's IDE patch, for example 2.4.18-pre7-ac3 and 2.5.3. -------8<-------- So I doubt, the 1x0ct will work with this drives. AFAIK there were interface changes which affect the whole IDE interface (hw). > John Martin sl ritch
