Re: [newbie] cylinders, sectors and heads trouble: Solved

2002-06-10 Thread H. Narfi Stefansson

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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Re: [newbie] cylinders, sectors and heads trouble: Solved

2002-06-10 Thread John Richard Smith

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 have the same 
MoBo as you except I have RAID but I turn it off in Bios, so any 
explanation for this apparent quirk is something I want to know about 
as much as you. Have you ever had trouble getting this WD hard drive 
recognised on any other MoBo.

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 
together well. However overall, I think it just means left as it is 
you will have a small pece of hardrive going to waste that's all,
When this started to happen to me I bought Partition Magic and 
started completely again, and touch wood I have not had any problems 
so far. It does not matter if you choose to format with different 
formatting tools so long as all the partitions are created by the one 
partition tool.However PM does a very though job of checking your 
drive for bad sectors,marking them, and formatting, if you choose so 
to do . It is slow, but I fully accept that , why not let it do it's 
job carefully and precisely, you just set up the programme , go away 
for a while and come back an hour or so later and all is done 
beautifully. You can then get on and install operating systems.
John
-- 
John Richard Smith
[EMAIL PROTECTED]



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