Re: getting full usage of memory and disk
Sergey Avvakumov (avva@puck.fnal.gov)
Mon, 30 Nov 1998 15:13:56 -0600 (EST)
> >
> > Hi!
> >
> > Try
> >
> > append = "hd=2100,16,63" # hd=cylinders,heads,sectors
> >
>
>
> > You should change cylinders, heads, sectors for your Hard Disk.
>
> You *really* need to know what you're doing if you're going to try this,
> especially if you have data already on the disk, or you have partitions
> you wish to use with (eg) Windows NT. I would suggest you read the HOWTO
> document referenced by a previous posting to this list before considering
> anything as drastic as telling the hard drive itself that it has a
> different number of cylinders, heads and sectors. This can work, but can
> also screw up *really* badly (I had a nasty experience with a medallist
> 8.6GB drive on a dual-boot machine I was trying to configure). My problem
> was fixed by using lba, a 2.0.35 kernel and NT pre-service pack 3, if
> anyone is interested.
>
> Regards,
> Chris.
>
Hi,
Totally agree with Chris. If your computer is new, the BIOS does know how
to handle large disks (large is >8.4GB) , I just recently installed two
13.6GB Maxtor DiamondMax drives on two linux PCs and had no problems,
period. The only trick is to pick the right setting in the BIOS setup,
which can be easily found in the user's manual. Trying to force kernel to
use the certain hard drive geometry is like the "use of unnecessary
violence", it's quite dangerous.
Sergei