Problems with Maxtor 120 GB drive
I realize this isn't the right place to be asking this, but people here are very helpful and it's the only place I could think of to ask.
I just purchased a Maxtor 120GB MXTL01P120 hard drive and when I tried to install it with Redhat it wrote over the partition table describing it as only 8GB. I tried doing linux rescue and lilo complained that the physical and logical disk sizes did not match (logical was the correct size, physical was the 8GB).
Any idea what could be causing this?
Jay
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* Jay Denebeim Moderator rec.arts.sf.tv.babylon5.moderated * * newsgroup submission address: [email protected] * * moderator contact address: [email protected] * * personal contact address: [email protected] *
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Quoted 5 lines · Jay Denebeim
I just purchased a Maxtor 120GB MXTL01P120 hard drive and when I tried to install it with Redhat it wrote over the partition table describing it as only 8GB. I tried doing linux rescue and lilo complained that the physical and logical disk sizes did not match (logical was the correct size, physical was the 8GB).
I'm no guru here, but as far as I know, 8GB will be about all you'll see without using logical block addressing (LBA). Using the lba32 option in your lilo.conf might help.
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| Stuart Longland stuartl at longlandclan.hopto.org | | Brisbane Mesh Node: 719 http://stuartl.cjb.net/ | | I haven't lost my mind - it's backed up on a tape somewhere | | Griffith Student No: Course: Bachelor/IT (Nathan) | +-------------------------------------------------------------+
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Quoted 7 lines · Jay Denebeim
I just purchased a Maxtor 120GB MXTL01P120 hard drive and when I tried to install it with Redhat it wrote over the partition table describing it as only 8GB. I tried doing linux rescue and lilo complained that the physical and logical disk sizes did not match (logical was the correct size, physical was the 8GB).
Any idea what could be causing this?
I ended up getting a good answer to this question. Thanks to everyone who answered, especially Stuart Longland who gave me the right answer.
I'm not sure precisely what caused this. It probably has something to do with the BIOS I suppose. I don't know how this part of the kernel works.
Anyway, to fix the problem is had to give lba32 as a kernel option when booting the kernel. That upped my max from 8GB to 32GB. The other thing I had to do was make my new drive the master and the old drive the slave. That allowed the system to see all the drive.
Is should be noted that I have a new motherboard in this system. The old 20Gig drive was exibiting the same 8Gig problem without the LBA32 switch. So it must be the BIOS that is the problem. It's an AMI bios, and unfortunately the machine belongs to my SO so I can't type the version at the moment.
Hope this helps someone in the future
Jay
Signature · 4 lines
* Jay Denebeim Moderator rec.arts.sf.tv.babylon5.moderated * * newsgroup submission address: [email protected] * * moderator contact address: [email protected] * * personal contact address: [email protected] *
Quoted 22 lines · you
Quoted 7 lines · Jay Denebeim
I just purchased a Maxtor 120GB MXTL01P120 hard drive and when I tried to install it with Redhat it wrote over the partition table describing it as only 8GB. I tried doing linux rescue and lilo complained that the physical and logical disk sizes did not match (logical was the correct size, physical was the 8GB).
Any idea what could be causing this?
I ended up getting a good answer to this question. Thanks to everyone who answered, especially Stuart Longland who gave me the right answer.
I'm not sure precisely what caused this. It probably has something to do with the BIOS I suppose. I don't know how this part of the kernel works.
Anyway, to fix the problem is had to give lba32 as a kernel option when booting the kernel. That upped my max from 8GB to 32GB. The other thing I had to do was make my new drive the master and the old drive the slave. That allowed the system to see all the drive.
Quoted 5 lines
Is should be noted that I have a new motherboard in this system. The old 20Gig drive was exibiting the same 8Gig problem without the LBA32 switch. So it must be the BIOS that is the problem. It's an AMI bios, and unfortunately the machine belongs to my SO so I can't type the version at the moment.
But, it's not helping me aparently. This morning the system would no longer boot. I got a call from my SO while I was driving home from work today (my commute is 240 miles round trip) so I tried to talk her through putting grub back on the system. Somehow the drive ended up getting formatted, and now I'm back at square one. Unfortunately this time the linux lba32 boot is no longer working. It won't recognize either of the drives as being more than 8 gig.
I suspect this is a motherboard/bios issue, the motherboard is an ECS 'K7S5A Pro'. (www.ecsusa.com), the bios is an AMIBIOS simple setup utility Version 1.21.11. The distro is redhat 9 straight off of the CD. There doesn't seem to be anything on it to select large LBAs.
Any help would be greatly appreciated even a "I know that mobo is no good with linux, get another one" would be useful since we've only had it a couple of weeks and could probably return it. (Which I would have done already, except that it was the only one Frys carried that would take the brand new SDram (not DDR) we bought for the previous motherboard which then proceeded to smoke after the next power hit. (Yes, I've been having a very frustrating month with the SO's computer.))
Jay
Signature · 4 lines
* Jay Denebeim Moderator rec.arts.sf.tv.babylon5.moderated * * newsgroup submission address: [email protected] * * moderator contact address: [email protected] * * personal contact address: [email protected] *
Hi it's me again,
I'm still having problems with my Maxtor drive. Again, my configuration is as follows:
1) motherboard: ECS K7S5A Pro latest firmware from their website
2) distribution: Redhat 9 (Tom's rtbt does the same thing)
3) kernel: 2.4.20
4) Harddrive Maxtor 120GB MXTL01P120
Note, there's also a western digital 20gig in the system that exibits the same problems.
Problem:
Disk druid and fdisk only own up to there being 8 gig on the drives. There seems to be no way to force it to other values.
I've tried:
1) turning the knobs in the bios.
2) saying 'lba32' to the kernel during boot. (I've since found out that this is not a switch to the kernel, it's to lilo)
3) Switching the master/slavedness of the drives.
4) Trying 1 and 2 with each drive separately.
It should be noted that before I changed out the motherboard the 20gig drive worked fine. We had a power hit which is what started all this. Since then we've replaced the CPU, memory, motherboard, and finally one of the hard drives which has put us in this state.
New things I've discovered.
1) Windows XP has no problem with this system.
2) the information in /proc/ide/hd? is incorrect
3) hdparm -I gives the correct data
I really, really need help. For instance, where does the data in /proc/ide/hd? come from? What code derives it? Is there any way to force good values into it?
My theory is that this data is coming from the CMOS somewhere. I was talking with a maxtor engineer about this and he mentioned something about this, but when I tried to pin him down to something I could actually investigate he couldn't help me. That seems to mean if I get another motherboard I could make this problem go away. Only problem is this is the only SDRAM motherboard Fry's carries, so I'll have to buy new ram as well. (since it's all brand new I'm hesitant to just pitch this stuff, unfortunately we can't find the receipt for the mobo so I've alreaday poured that $60 down the drain)
Anyway, if anyone has any ideas I'd greatly appreciate a hand.
Jay
Signature · 4 lines
* Jay Denebeim Moderator rec.arts.sf.tv.babylon5.moderated * * newsgroup submission address: [email protected] * * moderator contact address: [email protected] * * personal contact address: [email protected] *