This is my understanding of what's going on. It may explain your problem.
I've also included my own (E)IDE experience.
This is long. you've been warned.
(If anyone can confirm or correct me, it would be greatly appreciated)
Follow the bouncing Logic :)
1) All disks over 540Mb have > 1024 cylinders.
The bigger the drive, the more cylinders.
2) Due to BIOS restrictions, the IDE interface can only deal with
1024 cylinders.
Conclusion (thus far):
The BIOS control over IDE interfaces can't deal with drives bigger than
540mb (1024 Cyl).
3) Linux gets its drive geometry info from the BIOS.
Actually, so does Win/DOS (although indirectly, I don't know the details).
Thus, they can't deal with drives over 540MB.
Conclusion (thus far):
Neither windows, DOS or Linux can deal with >540Mb drives.
4) There is a "trick" called LBA, which is a BIOS hack that allows
some of the bits that are used as cylinder info to be treated
as head info. In effect, it makes your drive look like it has
fewer cylinders, and more heads. See the EIDE/fast ATA FAQ:
http://burks.bton.ac.uk/burks/pcinfo/hardware/atafaq/atafaq.htm
Conclusion (thus far):
If you have a BIOS that "does" LBA, you can use large drives.
Otherwise you are screwed.
5) Ah, but most drive manufacturers ship their drives with
a "drive-overlay" program which translates the addresses
for the BIOS, in software. If you have such a program,
you can use larger drives even if you don't have a more
up-to-date BIOS. Unfortunately, these programs are for DOS/Win
only.
An aside:
Thus far I can confirm all of this from first hand experience.
I had a 1.5 gig drive on my old P-60 with an ancient BIOS.
I could not use the full disk until I used the manufacturer-supplied
drive-overlay program. But Linux couldn't use the disk, just windows.
Linux had to sit on the second drive, 340Mb, 1010 Cyl.
Conclusion (thus far):
Windows/DOS users can use large disks with an uncooperative BIOS.
Linux users need BIOS support.
This seems to be the way things stand, see below.
Another aside:
The time came to make Linux my primary system. I wanted it on the 1.5G,
with windows on the 340M. I tried for WEEKS to get this to work.
The only solution that I came up with (and I had a LOT of help from this
list) was that I needed to get an EIDE card. One with on-board BIOS.
It worked like a charm. Cost about $20.
How is this relevent to your situation?
The card only supported up to 8.2G drives. Said so right in the manual.
Conclusion (final):
Your EIDE controller MAY only support up to an 8.2 gig drive.
This may be the problem both of you are having. How do I figure, you ask?
Well: 1) 540Mb drives are 1024 Cylinders.
2) If you have a card that only supports up to 8.2Gig drives,
then an 8.2gig drive will look like they have 1024 Cyl.
3) So your 8.4G dive has more then just 1027 heads. It just looks
like 1027. Check you documentation to find the real number.
3) One of you mentioned having an 8.4 gig drive that was registering
as 1027 cylinders. 1027 is just above 1024 cylinders, and
8.4 is just above 8.2.
In other words, an 8.4 gig drive SHOULD show up as just
over 1024 cly on a card/BIOS that only supports up to
8.2Gig drives. This seems to be what is happening.
Suggestion: Look at the documentation that came with your Motherboard
(if the EIDE interface is on-board) or for you EIDE card,
(if you use one). That may confirm all of this.
Bryan Scaringe
