i forgot the formula to find out how big a drive is thru its cylinders,heads, and sectors

its
3400 cylinders
16 heads
63 sectors

thanks

Doesn't your initial screen at start up before your bootloader kicks in tell you the device size (in meg's) ???

regards

John

try 'cfdisk'
hope you have it installed.. yet be careful

# How much free/used drive space
df -h

# Red Hat links
Red Hat Linux Manuals
Get your mp3 support here
Maximum RPM
rpmfind
Easier software management: apt4rpm - Red Carpet
Red Hat 8.0 Tips & Tricks

3400x16x63x512=1002700800 bytes = 979200 Kb = 956.24 MB



Wow, I can't believe I remeber this stuff.
*blows dust off of A+ certificate*

slight

lol thanks that was the whole point....to not need to use the computer...thanks!

Cool.

Brought back memories.

slight

My calculator gives me:

3400x16x63x512=1754726400 bytes = 1713600 KB = 1673.44 MB

But things are no longer as simple as that. Using my two drives as an example:

Seagate ST320414A (20GB): CHS=16383x16x63.
Size is: 16383x16x63x512 = 8455200768 bytes = 8257032 KB = 8063.5 MB (< 8 GB)

Seagate ST380021A (80 GB): CHS=16383x16x63.
Size is: 16383x16x63x512 = 8455200768 bytes = 8257032 KB = 8063.5 MB (< 8 GB)

Eh? What's going on here? The simple answer is that the formula CHSx512 only works where there are an equal number of sectors on all cylinders, which is OK if you have an older drive. However, if you have a newer drive that uses more sectors for the outer cylinders - 'Zone Recording' - then this formula no longer holds true. (If your drive uses Logical Block Addressing then it's most probably one of these.) Instead, you have to know how many total sectors are on the disk, and that comes from the manufacturer's specification. In my case, they are 39,102,336 (19092 MB) and 156,301,488 (76319 MB) respectively, whereas CHS would only give 16,514,064 sectors for both drives.

So you have to resort to asking the computer how big your drive is, or you could be way off. More info here on CHS and 'Zone Recording':

http://www.byteoutofcrime.org/newsV6I1.html

It just goes to show that you have to be careful in using old information; technology marches on and destroys your old benchmarks.

Thank you for the adjustment on my math, must have hit a button wrong on the calculator. As for the change in the formula, you are correct. I was guessing based on the low number of cylinders that this is an older drive and that the calculation would hold true.

slight