Re: [newbie] Hard Drive Geometries
Ron Bouwhuis wrote: >--- John Richard Smith ><[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > > >>I once took the problem up with two harddrive >>manufacturers, as to why >>you get >>two different sizes for the same drive , depending >>upon which machine >>you put it in, >>and indeed why the manufacturers size measurements >>always are greater >>than that >>which your system says there is. >> >>The answer appears to be that indeed there are more >>than one way of >>calculating >>sizes. Apparently , there is no industry wide >>standard, it all depends >>upon the formular >>used to calculate it. Now this explanation may be >>false , but I have >>noticed different >>machines do calculate the size of a known hard >>drive slightly >>differently, which tends to >>suggest that this may be true. At any rate , in the >>absense of a better >>explanation >>I have come to accept it. >> >>John >> >> >> >John, > >Check out >http://physics.nist.gov/cuu/Units/binary.html - which >IMHO describes a madness that I hope will never reach >the real world (I mean, really, can you imagine >actually saying "mebibyte" or "gibibyte"???). >However, it does explain one major area of confusion >(and opportunity for deceipt) - namely that for a >drive labelled, say as 20GB, what exactly does the "G" >mean? In the old (real) world of IT, "G" means 2 ** >30. However, to a manufacturer following SI units, >"G" means 10 ** 9, which is a lot smaller! > >Ron. > >__ >Do You Yahoo!? >HotJobs - Search Thousands of New Jobs >http://www.hotjobs.com > > > > > > Oh dear me, what a nightmare. No wonder, it's a mess, just a sample of this carnage:- Once upon a time, computer professionals noticed that 2^10 was very nearly equal to 1000 and started using the SI prefix "kilo" to mean 1024. That worked well enough for a decade or two because everybody who talked kilobytes knew that the term implied 1024 bytes. But, almost overnight a much more numerous "everybody" bought computers, and the trade computer professionals needed to talk to physicists and engineers and even to ordinary people, most of whom know that a kilometer is 1000 meters and a kilogram is 1000 grams. Then data storage for gigabytes, and even terabytes, became practical, and the storage devices were not constructed on binary trees, which meant that, for many practical purposes, binary arithmetic was less convenient than decimal arithmetic. The result is that today "everybody" does not "know" what a megabyte is. When discussing computer memory, most manufacturers use megabyte to mean 2^20 = 1 048 576 bytes, but the manufacturers of computer storage devices usually use the term to mean 1 000 000 bytes. Some designers of local area networks have used megabit per second to mean 1 048 576 bit/s, but all telecommunications engineers use it to mean 10^6 bit/s. And if two definitions of the megabyte are not enough, a third megabyte of 1 024 000 bytes is the megabyte used to format the familiar 90 mm (3 1/2 inch), "1.44 MB" diskette. The confusion is real, as is the potential for incompatibility in standards and in implemented systems. And that is just a sample. So really the whole computer industry needs better standardization, but there is noone around with the authority to set standards maybe ? John -- John Richard Smith [EMAIL PROTECTED] Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [newbie] Hard Drive Geometries
--- John Richard Smith <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > I once took the problem up with two harddrive > manufacturers, as to why > you get > two different sizes for the same drive , depending > upon which machine > you put it in, > and indeed why the manufacturers size measurements > always are greater > than that > which your system says there is. > > The answer appears to be that indeed there are more > than one way of > calculating > sizes. Apparently , there is no industry wide > standard, it all depends > upon the formular > used to calculate it. Now this explanation may be > false , but I have > noticed different > machines do calculate the size of a known hard > drive slightly > differently, which tends to > suggest that this may be true. At any rate , in the > absense of a better > explanation > I have come to accept it. > > John > John, Check out http://physics.nist.gov/cuu/Units/binary.html - which IMHO describes a madness that I hope will never reach the real world (I mean, really, can you imagine actually saying "mebibyte" or "gibibyte"???). However, it does explain one major area of confusion (and opportunity for deceipt) - namely that for a drive labelled, say as 20GB, what exactly does the "G" mean? In the old (real) world of IT, "G" means 2 ** 30. However, to a manufacturer following SI units, "G" means 10 ** 9, which is a lot smaller! Ron. __ Do You Yahoo!? HotJobs - Search Thousands of New Jobs http://www.hotjobs.com Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [newbie] Hard Drive Geometries
On Tue, 20 Aug 2002 05:09:52 +1200, Sharrea <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > On Mon, 19 Aug 2002 15:08, Sridhar Dhanapalan wrote: > > > IBM drives made in the year or so have had major reliability problems. In > > fact, IBM are trying to get out of the business by selling most (70%) of > > their hard drive unit to Hitachi. Quantum Bigfoots have had reliability > > problems as well. I am on my third 12GB Bigfoot TX after the first two > > died on me. Fortunately, this one seems to be doing very well. The > > Seagate Barracuda IV is, I believe, a reliable drive. I have 2 80GB > > models in one machine and I've had no trouble. > > Yes, in the last six months I've read many complaints and horror stories > about IBM drives so it came as no surprise to me when my IBM drive died. > I've had no problem with my old Quantum tho (touch wood). I've only had > the Seagate approx. 4 months and so far so good - jeez its so quiet I keep > checking the light to see if its doing anything! Yeah, I do the same for my two Seagate drives. I have them configured into a RAID0, so every read or write operation is done to both drives at once. Even with both drives going, I can't hear them over the system fans. > > What are your hard drive BIOS settings? > > Both drives set to Auto Detection in BIOS which shows: > Seagate (/dev/hda) CHS=28733/16/255 Size=600025 MB > Quantum (/dev/hdb) CHS=13446/15/63 Size=6506 MB > > > Is LBA turned on? > > How do you turn LBA on? I have "lba32" (without the quotes) in lilo.conf if > thats what you mean. There should be an LBA option in the BIOS. > > What you should do is go to the Seagate and IBM Web sites and download > > their drive diagnostic utilities. They will hopefully be able to analyse > > the drives and tell you what's wrong. > > I went to the Seagate web site but their diagnostic utility only runs in > Windoze which I'm pleased to say does not exist on this PC. My 2nd PC will > have Mandrake and Windoze when my new hard drive arrives - I've just > ordered an 80GB Seagate Barracuda IV. The Seagate diagnostic utility downloads as a Windows executable that is used to make a boot disc. You can make the boot disc on any Windows machine, and it should work on any system. IIRC, the IBM Feature tool works in the same way. > > In addition, the IBM Feature Tool > > can turn off Automatic Acoustic Management (AAM) on the Seagate drive, > > giving you better drive performance (hdparm can do this as well, but I'm > > not sure if that setting remains after a reboot) . > > I'll check that out. Is the drive still so quiet when AAM is turned off? My ears can't tell the difference either way. > Also, may I ask what your model and settings are for your 80GB Seagate > drives so that I might have some idea when my new one arrives? According to hdparm: model = ST380021A CHS = 16383/16/63 LBA is on -- Sridhar Dhanapalan " An ordinary frog goes "ribbit, ribbit" and a budfrog goes "bud ,,, Weis... Er", but a winfrog goes "reboot, reboot, reboot" " -- Civileme Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re[2]: [newbie] Hard Drive Geometries
Hi, >> Is LBA turned on? > How do you turn LBA on? I have "lba32" (without the quotes) in > lilo.conf if thats what you mean. Sridhar meant the setting in the BIOS. Try changing it from AUTO to LBA. >> In addition, the IBM Feature Tool >> can turn off Automatic Acoustic Management (AAM) on the Seagate drive, >> giving you better drive performance (hdparm can do this as well, but I'm >> not sure if that setting remains after a reboot) . > I'll check that out. Is the drive still so quiet when AAM is turned off? Almost. That's the point of Acoustic management - to make it quiter at the expense of some performance. AFAIK the drive seeks will be a bit louder. -- HTH Roman Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [newbie] Hard Drive Geometries
> Sharrea wrote: > > > > Hi all > > > couldn't resist :) > > I don't understand why BIOS, hdparm and fdisk all report different > > geometries. Also, as a result RedHat 7.3 can't read the partn table for > > hda so I can't install without wiping the drive clean. Any help would be > > much appreciated. > > > > For now I'll try booting with a dos floppy and doing "fdisk /mbr" then > > rebooting with Mandrake boot disk and running lilo - just in case the lilo > > upgrades caused this problem - a long shot I know. > > > > Sharrea > > -- > > The box said "Requires Windows 95 or better" so I installed Linux. > > > > Sounds like bad sectors. Probably (IF thats the case) its a dying > drive. RMA or chuck it. Not your fault. And fwiw, BIOSes, other OSes, > etc all read HDD geom. very differently. Hell theres a few threads on > this in the archives. I know, i wrote a whole little diatribe on it > myself. so did Ed Tharp et al. > -- > Femme > > Good Decisions You boss Made: > > "We'll do as you suggest and go with Linux. I've always liked that > character from Peanuts." > > - Source: Dilbert > > > Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? > Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com -- Femme Good Decisions You boss Made: "We'll do as you suggest and go with Linux. I've always liked that character from Peanuts." - Source: Dilbert Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [newbie] Hard Drive Geometries
On Mon, 19 Aug 2002 15:08, Sridhar Dhanapalan wrote: > IBM drives made in the year or so have had major reliability problems. In > fact, IBM are trying to get out of the business by selling most (70%) of > their hard drive unit to Hitachi. Quantum Bigfoots have had reliability > problems as well. I am on my third 12GB Bigfoot TX after the first two > died on me. Fortunately, this one seems to be doing very well. The > Seagate Barracuda IV is, I believe, a reliable drive. I have 2 80GB > models in one machine and I've had no trouble. Yes, in the last six months I've read many complaints and horror stories about IBM drives so it came as no surprise to me when my IBM drive died. I've had no problem with my old Quantum tho (touch wood). I've only had the Seagate approx. 4 months and so far so good - jeez its so quiet I keep checking the light to see if its doing anything! > What are your hard drive BIOS settings? Both drives set to Auto Detection in BIOS which shows: Seagate (/dev/hda) CHS=28733/16/255 Size=600025 MB Quantum (/dev/hdb) CHS=13446/15/63 Size=6506 MB > Is LBA turned on? How do you turn LBA on? I have "lba32" (without the quotes) in lilo.conf if thats what you mean. > What you should do is go to the Seagate and IBM Web sites and download > their drive diagnostic utilities. They will hopefully be able to analyse > the drives and tell you what's wrong. I went to the Seagate web site but their diagnostic utility only runs in Windoze which I'm pleased to say does not exist on this PC. My 2nd PC will have Mandrake and Windoze when my new hard drive arrives - I've just ordered an 80GB Seagate Barracuda IV. > In addition, the IBM Feature Tool > can turn off Automatic Acoustic Management (AAM) on the Seagate drive, > giving you better drive performance (hdparm can do this as well, but I'm > not sure if that setting remains after a reboot) . I'll check that out. Is the drive still so quiet when AAM is turned off? Also, may I ask what your model and settings are for your 80GB Seagate drives so that I might have some idea when my new one arrives? Thanks for your input Sridhar. I'll go check out the IBM Feature Tool now. Cheers Sharrea -- The box said "Requires Windows 95 or better" so I installed Linux. Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [newbie] Hard Drive Geometries
On Mon, 19 Aug 2002 13:08, et wrote: > On Sunday 18 August 2002 07:26 pm, you wrote: > > After my sh*tty IBM Deskstar drive dying on me last week, I'm wondering > > whether it was thru my own doing so can someone please help me > > determine what the correct parameter for my hard drives are. I have > > two hard drives: 60GB Seagate Barracuda IV and 6.4GB Quantum Bigfoot. > > > > I'm using Mandrake Cooker and lilo-22.3.2-5 gives the following warning > > (I've been getting warnings about differing geometries with the last 3 > > or 4 versions of lilo, including on the now-dead IBM Deskstar) : > > Sharrea > > now was one of these drives (my guess the seagate) in a computer that had > a bios that could not see a drive as big as this? maybe when brand new? > and has since gotten ether an new motherboard or a BIOS upgrade? and was > setup with the manufacturers setup disk? maybe backup first, then a > fooling around with diskdrake from the install CD is in your future. > maybe a newdrive is also in your future, but not as likely unless you > feel like spending the cash. Sounds like you're onto something there! The drive that is now a paper-weight (I'm going to take it apart to see whats inside to satisfy my curiosity) is the 60GB IBM Deskstar which only lasted 18 months! Yes, it came with the IBM Drive Manager installed on it which I originally used when installing Windoze 98SE. IIRC, I later formatted the drive and removed the Drive Manager only to find that the BIOS did not recognise the full capacity. I did a BIOS flash upgrade but it still didn't recognise full capacity so I installed the Ontrack Dynamic Drive Overlay to be able to utilise the full 60GB. Next came the PC upgrade (new case, mobo, cpu, ram, etc) and I transferred the drive to that PC. Then last year when I first started using linux, Civileme said that I should remove the DDO and use the hd geometries from hdparm. I messed around with that trying every possible thing I could think of but Mandrake could only see the 30GB (same in the BIOS) so I had no choice BUT to use the DDO. I tried all that again about a month ago but it was a waste of time. Then we had a wicked power outage a few weeks ago which fried part of the drive - it affected one of the RedHat (dual booting with Mandrake) partitions. I continued to use the drive knowing it was only a matter of time before it was completely stuffed - it was making loud screeching noises whenever that part of the drive was accessed. And finally I decided to use the Seagate drive in my main PC so switched drives, removed all partitions, created new partitions and formatted (on both drives). The IBM drive didn't complete the formatting process (not that I expected it to) so I turned the computer off. When I turned it back on: nada, nothing but screech... screech... Never did like that stupid drive anyway, especially having to use the DDO and it was noisy. And would you believe I paid NZ$1109 (approx US$550) for it 18 months ago! So I'm just a bit worried about lilo's warnings of differing geometries and wondering why BIOS, hdparm and fdisk all use different geometries on the Seagate and Quantum. Jeez this has turned into long rant. Thanks for your input. Cheers Sharrea -- The box said "Requires Windows 95 or better" so I installed Linux. Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re[2]: [newbie] Hard Drive Geometries
Hi, >> Sharrea wrote: >> > I don't understand why BIOS, hdparm and fdisk all report different >> > geometries. Also, as a result RedHat 7.3 can't read the partn table for >> > hda so I can't install without wiping the drive clean. Any help would be >> > much appreciated. > I can't recite the details, but a disk can be formatted with different > geometries. (I don't know if that was what I meant to say.) > Try again: In some programs (fdisk, partition commnder, bios ) I > have seen more than one geometry reported for the same hard disk. (AHH, > IIRC, it was in the bios.) Although there was a mechanism to choose any > one of them, if I chose the wrong one the disk was unreadable. > Maybe someone else can provide more insight on this. AFAIK the different reports are normal - the disk can be accessed in many ways. If it is a 1GB+ disk you only should make sure that in BIOS the access method is set to LBA, in no way NORMAL or LARGE. You can make check that at the screen right after after the memory check - the sort of table with CPU and disk info before it says "loading grub" or "loading lilo". Before info about your capacity there should be LBA. My friend's P3 800 had his 30GB disk set to LARGE and it screwed up the whole partition table when I tried to install MDK 8.2 (said something about sector 633GB conflicting with some 800GB sector... oh well). -- HTH Roman Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [newbie] Hard Drive Geometries
> Sharrea wrote: > > I don't understand why BIOS, hdparm and fdisk all report different > > geometries. Also, as a result RedHat 7.3 can't read the partn table for > > hda so I can't install without wiping the drive clean. Any help would be > > much appreciated. I can't recite the details, but a disk can be formatted with different geometries. (I don't know if that was what I meant to say.) Try again: In some programs (fdisk, partition commnder, bios ) I have seen more than one geometry reported for the same hard disk. (AHH, IIRC, it was in the bios.) Although there was a mechanism to choose any one of them, if I chose the wrong one the disk was unreadable. Maybe someone else can provide more insight on this. Randy Kramer Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [newbie] Hard Drive Geometries
Sharrea wrote: > > Hi all > I don't understand why BIOS, hdparm and fdisk all report different > geometries. Also, as a result RedHat 7.3 can't read the partn table for > hda so I can't install without wiping the drive clean. Any help would be > much appreciated. > > For now I'll try booting with a dos floppy and doing "fdisk /mbr" then > rebooting with Mandrake boot disk and running lilo - just in case the lilo > upgrades caused this problem - a long shot I know. > > Sharrea > -- > The box said "Requires Windows 95 or better" so I installed Linux. > Sounds like bad sectors. Probably (IF thats the case) its a dying drive. RMA or chuck it. Not your fault. And fwiw, BIOSes, other OSes, etc all read HDD geom. very differently. Hell theres a few threads on this in the archives. I know, i wrote a whole little diatribe on it myself. so did Ed Tharp et al. -- Femme Good Decisions You boss Made: "We'll do as you suggest and go with Linux. I've always liked that character from Peanuts." - Source: Dilbert Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
[newbie] Hard Drive Geometries
Hi all
First, I apologise for the looong post but I think it may all be relevant.
After my sh*tty IBM Deskstar drive dying on me last week, I'm wondering
whether it was thru my own doing so can someone please help me determine
what the correct parameter for my hard drives are. I have two hard drives:
60GB Seagate Barracuda IV and 6.4GB Quantum Bigfoot.
I'm using Mandrake Cooker and lilo-22.3.2-5 gives the following warning
(I've been getting warnings about differing geometries with the last 3 or 4
versions of lilo, including on the now-dead IBM Deskstar) :
# /sbin/lilo
Warning: Int 0x13 function 8 and function 0x48 return different
head/sector geometries for BIOS drive 0x80
fn 08: 1024 cylinders, 255 heads, 63 sectors
fn 48: 28733 cylinders, 16 heads, 63 sectors
Warning: Int 0x13 function 8 and function 0x48 return different
head/sector geometries for BIOS drive 0x81
fn 08: 790 cylinders, 255 heads, 63 sectors
fn 48: 13446 cylinders, 15 heads, 63 sectors
Warning: 'menu-scheme' not supported by boot loader
Added failsafe
Added floppy
Added Mandrake *
I have both drives on auto detection in my BIOS settings which both show the
correct drive size.
BIOS Seagate /dev/hda:
Auto CHS=28733/16/255 Size=600025 MB
# hdparm -i /dev/hda
Model=ST360021A, FwRev=7.18, SerialNo=3HV0QF9N
Config={ HardSect NotMFM HdSw>15uSec Fixed DTR>10Mbs RotSpdTol>.5% }
RawCHS=16383/16/63, TrkSize=0, SectSize=0, ECCbytes=4
BuffType=unknown, BuffSize=2048kB, MaxMultSect=16, MultSect=16
CurCHS=16383/16/63, CurSects=16514064, LBA=yes, LBAsects=117231408
IORDY=on/off, tPIO={min:240,w/IORDY:120}, tDMA={min:120,rec:120}
PIO modes: pio0 pio1 pio2 pio3 pio4
DMA modes: mdma0 mdma1 mdma2
UDMA modes: udma0 udma1 udma2
AdvancedPM=no WriteCache=enabled
Drive conforms to: device does not report version: 1 2 3 4 5
# fdisk /dev/hda
The number of cylinders for this disk is set to 7297.
There is nothing wrong with that, but this is larger than 1024,
and could in certain setups cause problems...
Disk /dev/hda: 255 heads, 63 sectors, 7297 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 bytes
==
BIOS Quantum /dev/hdb:
Auto CHS=13446/15/63 Size=6506 MB
# hdparm -i /dev/hdb
Model=QUANTUM BIGFOOT_CY6480A, FwRev=A03.0500, SerialNo=166703029317
Config={ HardSect NotMFM HdSw>15uSec Fixed DTR>5Mbs TrkOff }
RawCHS=13446/15/63, TrkSize=32256, SectSize=512, ECCbytes=4
BuffType=DualPortCache, BuffSize=67kB, MaxMultSect=32, MultSect=32
CurCHS=13446/15/63, CurSects=12706470, LBA=yes, LBAsects=12706470
IORDY=on/off, tPIO={min:333,w/IORDY:120}, tDMA={min:120,rec:120}
PIO modes: pio0 pio1 pio2 pio3 pio4
DMA modes: sdma0 sdma1 sdma2 mdma0 mdma1 *mdma2
AdvancedPM=no
# fdisk /dev/hdb
Disk /dev/hdb: 255 heads, 63 sectors, 790 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 bytes
===
I don't understand why BIOS, hdparm and fdisk all report different
geometries. Also, as a result RedHat 7.3 can't read the partn table for
hda so I can't install without wiping the drive clean. Any help would be
much appreciated.
For now I'll try booting with a dos floppy and doing "fdisk /mbr" then
rebooting with Mandrake boot disk and running lilo - just in case the lilo
upgrades caused this problem - a long shot I know.
Sharrea
--
The box said "Requires Windows 95 or better" so I installed Linux.
Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft?
Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
