On 4/5/07, Larry Stotler <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
On 4/5/07, dwain <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> This is way over my head, but I'm trying to wrap my brain around this.
> I can set auto detection for the primary drive (or all of the
> peripherals for that matter) in the BIOS, but since the BIOS is the
> first to load (?) and the board manufacturer says with the BIOS update I
> have that the largest drive I can use is 40GB, how do I get a larger
> drive to be read so I can load the operating system on it? Not that I
> need anything larger than a 40GB drive anyway.
There have been several "limits" on hard drive sizes over the years.
The most common are the 504/528MB(most drive sizes are calculated
using base 2 by a BIOS, and base 10 by a manufacturer. That's why
your 40GB drive may only have 37GB of space.), the 2GB, the 8GB, the
32GB, and the 137GB. Some of these were design limits, others were
limited because of the way they were implemented(it gets very
technical. Here's a good article:
http://www.dewassoc.com/kbase/hard_drives/hard_drive_size_barriers.htm
Anyway, if your system will "see" a 40GB drive, then it should be fine
with a 120GB drive. Also, keep in mind that older drives spread the
data over a larger area, while newer drives pack it in very tightly.
The smaller the size of the packed data, the faster it can be read.
So, a 40GB drive will way outperform a 2GB drive. Most 2GB drives
were ATA-16.7, or 16.7MB maximum transfer rate or slower. a newer
40-120GB drive will be an ATA-100, which is 100MB/s Max. Of course
actual speed varies, so an older drive may only reach 3MB/s, while a
newer one will reach about 30-60MB/s.
Further, what are your system specs? Pentium 3? K6-2? Athlon?
Speed? Chipset?
Look at the file /var/log/boot.msg for more system specific info.
If you have 768MB, I would say use a 1GB SWAP drive for use in case
you want to be able to suspend to disk. I always make my SWAP drive
the first partition because it's easier to set it up that way. The
system auto calculates the rest of the drive. Then, I just name the
2nd drive something like /files and use it for storage. With a 40GB
drive, you really don't need separate partitions for /home or /usr,
unless you want to preserve your /home or move it to another machine.
I use the /files system(ie, /files, /files1. /files2, etc) so that
when I re-install(I never upgrade. Fresh installs are much better
IMHO), I don't have to worry about backing up that data.
--
To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
