Subject: Re: Maximum size for hard disks (and recommendations)
To: Matt Dainty <matt@bodgit-n-scarper.com>
From: John Hauser <jhauser@pobox.com>
List: port-cobalt
Date: 12/05/2003 10:12:48
Matt Dainty wrote:

>* John Hauser <jhauser@pobox.com> [2003-12-05 03:30:37]:
>  
>
>>Matt Dainty wrote:
>>    
>>
>>>I have currently two models in mind from looking at the archives:
>>>
>>>120GB Maxtor 4R120L0
>>>120GB Samsung SV1204H
>>>
>>>I'm guessing the equivalent 160GB+ models are not going to be that
>>>dissimilar with regards to operating characteristics.
>>>      
>>>
>>i've got a WD 200GB running in my qube2. the only problem i had was that 
>> as it ships it's jumpered for cable select. it needs to be jumpered as 
>>master for the NetBSD restore CD to work. it cost me a couple of hours 
>>of debugging before i checked the jumper setting.
>>    
>>
>
>Does this mean the Qube 2 IDE interface is capable of seeing the whole
>disk, i.e. LBA48? As I understand it that limit is at or around
>~ 140GB. How do you work around this?
>
>I've had another reply that the trick is to put the bigger disk(s) on a
>separate PCI card, but I'm guessing the Qube cannot be configured to
>boot from that instead of the onboard controller? I'd rather not get
>into the whole 2+ disks/roasted PSU issue, one disk will be plenty.
>
>Cheers
>
>Matt
>
the restore cd process worked fine with the big disk and no problems 
with LBA48 stuff.

it may be because the restore cd creates a small linux partition on the 
disk and then the qube launches netBSD from that.

it may also be that the *BSDs don't rely on the bios for geometry/boot 
info once the disk is partitioned. i seem to remember booting FreeBSD 
from 200GB disks on machines that "couldn't" boot off of any disk bigger 
than 32GB. but in that case i believe i had to prep the disk in another 
machine.

i can understand why you don't want to mess with 2 disks.
one of my qubes psu won't even spin up 2 disks.

-bash-2.05b# fdisk
Disk: /dev/rwd0d
NetBSD disklabel disk geometry:
cylinders: 16383 heads: 16 sectors/track: 63 (1008 sectors/cylinder)

BIOS disk geometry:
cylinders: 16383 heads: 16 sectors/track: 63 (1008 sectors/cylinder)

Partition table:
0: sysid 131 (Linux native)
    start 1, size 71547 (34 MB), flag 0x0
        beg: cylinder    0, head   0, sector  2
        end: cylinder   70, head  15, sector 43
1: sysid 130 (Linux swap or Prime or Solaris)
    start 71547, size 333886 (163 MB), flag 0x0
        beg: cylinder   70, head  15, sector 43
        end: cylinder  402, head   3, sector 28
2: sysid 169 (NetBSD)
    start 405433, size 390316535 (190584 MB), flag 0x0
        beg: cylinder  402, head   3, sector 29
        end: cylinder  548, head  15, sector 63
3: <UNUSED>
-bash-2.05b#-bash-2.05b# df
Filesystem  1K-blocks     Used     Avail Capacity  Mounted on
/dev/wd0a   189545726 72489064 107579374    40%    /
/dev/wd0f     2065830    10706   1951832     0%    /var
/dev/wd0g      496992        1    472141     0%    /tmp
-bash-2.05b#