[TriLUG] Any problems with a 160 GB IDE disk?

[Pat Regan]

On Tue, 14 Sep 2004, Joseph Mack NA3T wrote:

> On Mon, 13 Sep 2004, David Rasch wrote:
>
> > I had good luck on one of my systems disabling the hard disk in the
> > bios (the bios only detected 138GB of 200GB).
>
> I've had to do this with all my old machines as the disks get larger than
> the BIOS can handle. The problem then is that you can't boot off the hard
> disk anymore. I solved this for Linux 2.4.x kernels by booting off a
> floppy, but you can't boot off a floppy with 2.6.x, so I guess these older
> machines will stay at 2.4.x
>
> Are there any other solutions?
>

Back in what seem like the old, old, Linux kernel 1.2.xx days on 386/486
hardware we used to have that problem not at 138 gig but at 540 meg.  We
used to just make a smallish boot partition, to keep the kernel on,
somewhere in the first 540 meg.  Since the bios could only see the first
piece of the drive, you had to make sure everything you needed to get a
kernel loaded was up there.

I can't remember when the problem cropped up next cronologically, but it
was at the 8 gig mark.  :)

I would imagine that you can do the same thing today.  Just make a small
boot partition in the first 138 gig, and do whatever you like with the
rest.

Pat