[TriLUG] IDE Hard disk limitations BIOS and Linux

[Rick DeNatale]

Thanks Jason.

But if I can believe what I'm reading in the Large Disk How-to
http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/Large-Disk-HOWTO.html Linux should have no
problems anyway

Quoting from Section 1:

> You need not read this HOWTO since there are no problems with large hard disks these 
> days.

> Long ago, disks were large when they had a capacity larger than 528 MB, or than 8.4 GB, 
> or than 33.8 GB. These days the interesting limit is 137 GB. In all cases, sufficiently 
> recent Linux kernels handle the disk fine. 
...

> Advice

> For large SCSI disks: Linux has supported them from very early on. No action required.
> For large IDE disks (over 8.4 GB): make sure your kernel is 2.0.34 or later.
> For large IDE disks (over 33.8 GB): make sure your kernel is 2.0.39/2.2.14/2.3.21 or later.
> For large IDE disks (over 137 GB): make sure your kernel is 2.4.19/2.5.3 or later. 

RH 9 is kernel 2.4.20, I'm currently running 2.4.20-28.9smp

It sounds as if none of the currently available disks should be a
problem for a linux only system, even with the mobo ide interfaces, or
am I missing something?

So what I'm now thinking is that I'll get two 160GB drives, I was
looking at the Intrex site at the WD Caviars and they look like they
hit the right price performance point.

At the same time I take the system down, I'll probably replace the
CD-ROM drive with a DVD-ROM drive that I've got lying around from a
salvaged machine.  I think that it makes sense to put one of the IDE
hard drives and one of the optical drives on each IDE interface, which
seems as if it would give better performance for doing things like
copying CD/DVD ROMS directly between the optical drives.

Does this make sense?

On Mon, 20 Dec 2004 17:09:01 -0500, Jason Tower <jason at cerient.net> wrote:
> you can add a pci ide controller card that supports ata/66, that'll get
> you around this issue easily, especially if you're booting off a scsi
> disk.  i have several if you want to try one.
> 
> jason
> 
> On Monday 20 December 2004 17:01, Rick DeNatale wrote:
> > A few days ago I asked for Hard disk recommendations to add some
> > large hard disk(s) to my old IBM Intelistation M 6889.
> >
> > After trying to research IDE hard disks, I've gotten more and more
> > confused about the the size limits for IDE drives.
> >
> > I'm not sure how old this machine is, but it seems to have the latest
> > BIOS available which is dated May 12, 2000 (or at least that's what
> > the download page says, I haven't yet re-booted, gotta keep uptime
> > going!).  This machine has both SCSI and IDE interfaces. It's got two
> > 9GB SCSI drives in it now but the only IDE devices are a CD/ROM and a
> > DVD Writer.
> >
> > So how do I figure out how big an IDE drive I can add to this
> > machine, before I spen>d my money?
> >
> > How do I verify what the BIOS supports?  The Tech Ref says that it
> > supports LBA for drives bigger than 528 MB, which seems to imply that
> > it might well be limited to 120GB or less.
> >
> > Do I even need to worr>y about this. If I'm only running Linux I
> > understand that the kernel doesn't even use the BIOS is this right? I
> > figure that I'm going to 
keep the SCSI drives, and one of them will
> > still be the boot device.
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