On Monday 10 June 2002 05:53, you wrote: > On Monday 10 June 2002 01:26, you wrote: > > As I said previously, I had problems with my western digital hard > > drive. fdisk complained: > > Partition 1 does not end on cylinder boundary > > Previously, I had tried to put this information in the header of > > lilo.conf: install=/boot/boot.b > > vga=normal > > keytable=/boot/us.klt > > lba32 > > disk=/dev/hda bios=0x81 > > disk=/dev/hde bios=0x80 > > sectors = 53 > > heads = 16 > > cylinders = 77545 > > but that change never seemed to take effect so I deleted those 3 > > lines. Now I added a parameter in the append line in > > /etc/lilo.conf: append="hde=77545,16,63" > > and I believe this has the effect that I so much desired. At least > > fdisk does not complain any more. > > Who knows why this was needed? Maybe the hardware supplies the > > incorrect values, maybe the bios supplies the incorrect values. Or, > > perhaps, because there is already confusion about the bios code for > > /dev/hda and /dev/hde [see bios=0x81 and bios=0x80 above], the > > numbers for sectors and heads on /dev/hde are the numbers for a > > different drive! > > > > > > Narfi. > > Well I find that interesting, I do not see why Western Digital > hardrives should work any different from anyone else's hard drives, > as far as size and allocation of h s c is concerned. I don't think it does. It's just a piece of junk as we have often discussed here on the list, that's all. [See Civileme's posts for that] > so any > explanation for this apparent quirk is something I want to know about > as much as you. See my explanations above and the large disk howto, e.g. sections 14.1 and 14.2. file:///usr/share/doc/HOWTO/HTML/en/Large-Disk-HOWTO-14.html > As far as the other problem goes , "the not ending on cylinder > boundary"is concerned it is almost certainly something to do with > using mixed partition tools, my experience is that they don't go There was just the one problem: I created all my partitions on my old motherboard with c, s, h = (x, y, z). When I moved it to my new motherboard, Mandrake didn't think it was (x, y, z) any more. Thus, I pretty soon figured out that I just wanted the c, s, h to be read again as (x, y, z) and I had to figure out how to change that. This doesn't have anything to do with what partitioning tool I've been using. All my partitions were consistent with (x, y, z) and before creating any new partitions, I had to make sure that the partitioning software saw the c, s, h as (x, y, z). This is what the line append="hde=77545,16,63 in my /etc/lilo.conf does. Lessons to be learnt from this: After you have partitioned your hard drive, always print out and store the c, h, s of your hard drive that was used during the partioning. When you want to partition a second time, make sure that the partitioning software is using this same c, h, s so that your new partitions become compatible with the old ones. I have not read any warnings or indications about disk damage occurring if you do not do this and you are only using linux on your harddrive and the hard drive is using lba32 and the bios supports lba32. I simply tend to be cautious when it comes to my hard drives. [As an added note: if you are sharing the drive with windows then it is imperative that the c, h, s that is seen from Windows must be compatible with the partitioning of the hard drive. Otherwise you risk disk corruption.]
Best, Narfi.
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