Hello All-

Ive got a copy of Debian Linux which i downloaded and burned onto cd's via the Debian Homepage

When i try to use the disk partitioner in the debian installer, it only see's 33.8GB of my avalable 120GB on my internal Western Digital Hardrive. I understand that this is a bios error, usually i would use EZ-BIOS from Western Digital Corp. to fix this (For windows)

Unfortunatly EZ-BIOS doesnt support booting from a CD-ROM, just floppies. My installer is on a CD-ROM, and i cannot start the installer without booting directly from the CD-ROM.

What can i do to beat the 33.8GB limit? I'm thinking there must be a program to put in the MBR that'll do this for me, maybe GRUB?? i dont know, as i'm not familiar with how grub works, i've only used LILO, and just to boot, so i only have a rudamentary understanding of how it works.

If anyone knows how to get Linux to access the full space on my HD, please help.

I'm assuming this must be in another forum, but none of my browsing has helped, and all my searches have turned up nada.

-James Kelson

You need this information from the decal on the hard drive: cylinders, heads, sectors.

Then power-on the computer and hold the delete key to get into the BIOS. On some computers it may be one of the function keys instead, such as F2 or F8.

If I remember correctly, you should then select CMOS settings, select the disk, and edit the values for cylinders, heads, sectors, and on the far right, the value should be LBA (for large disks). From the first three values, the BIOS works out the size of the disk.

Save and exit BIOS to continue booting.

Unfortunatly that wont work- my bios will not accept changes from the user,

i know it sounds really strange,--REALLY ANNOYING VERSION OF BIOS-- but with the version of bios that came with my computer, i'm actally not able to edit cmos settings --the two settings i can change dealing with my harddrive deal with preformance or compatiblility mode. Neither change the fact that my bios can only see 33 .8 GB's worth of harddrive. Like i said EZ-BIOS in the MBR fixes this. And in irony, i found out that EZ-BIOS still works with linux on my harddrive, just not when im installing (On a CD-ROM), which i previously thought it wouldnt. If i boot from my hd drive, linux should be able to see my full drive

Basically what i'm asking is if i can edit partition sizes from inside linux.

I know that i cannot enter in cyl heads or sectors, as i have dealt with many other versions of bios, and they all have settings to change.

Or better yet, is there a program like EZ-BIOS that allows you to boot from the CD-ROM drive?

--sorry for the hasle, but 33 gigs doesnt cut it for my pc

James

I'm not familiar with what partitioning tools debian offers,
what does a plain fdisk report about the drive? Usually the Linux
kernel doesn't require BIOS support once it's loaded, so I'm
not sure where the limitation may come from. It wouldn't
be something (some tool) that you've previously used on the
HDD from Windows or the like that makes the HDD report back funny
things? I also have never heard of a 33GB limit before this
post of yours...



Cheers,
Tink

have you checked for any BIOS updates for your MB? just checking

Mmmm; what does "fdisk -l" show - hopefully the entire disk.

I tend to take the path of least resistance - if you feel you have to use Debian, I'd be inclined to use what you can see; should be plenty.
When you get a system together, then worry about partitioning off the rest.

Ha! I love your way of thinking!

Tink - Plain fdisk from the fully booted system --this is running on the harddrive-- 128GB -- basically exactly what ist suppost to. It's also reported as an Ez-drive, which is a goodthing, as i put ez bios on the harddrive.

I cannot run fdisk-l from the debian installer disks, its not a supported command.

Your absoultyly right, linux has no dependancies from bios. Once bios's done linux takes over and does it's thing. Not true with the debian installer disks. My best guess is that they do pull the information from bios, but i have no idea why. My only reasoning for this guess is that my bios can only see 33 GB, and my linux installer partition can only see 33GB. May be for some other reason, or just plain coincidence, but thats all i can gather.

As for the tool with windos -works just fine for linux, as i said, i can see the full 128GB with fdisk-l, i just cant paratition the other 95Gigs.

I am very partial to linux thank you very much it happens to come bundled very nice, and i have it running just fine on an external harddrive (not detected by bios) for a different computer.

After i downloaded the 20 hours worth of debian, i read about its shell running with layer 2 scripts or something Yes that has hindered me, wine did not want to work, neither does pengAOL. Thats jsut fine it will take some tweaking, but really id like to use debain just because i invested 20 hrs to try it )

sandwhale was absoulty right, i have an ibm with Award Bios. (Very annoying) however f4 doesn't seem to have any (visible) effect, and the debian disks dont support setmax -d 0 before booting, or in a shell later on. And even with f4 depressed, the partitioner still says 33GB. Which leads to doubt about it being a bios problem.

sys00 is probably right, i shouldn't use linux, i'll putz with it more, but most likely i will end up trying a new version. Because everyone hates a noob asking for adv on which distro to use, i'll just spill my plans hedout, I'm think i will try slackware next, heard some good reviews on that. If not, i'll find someting else, or maybe move to a different os like BSD.

thanks for all your help!, if anyone knows what i'm talking about, dont hesitate to tell me!

--James

PCI/IDE Expansion Card and bypass the system BIOS completely?

Just a thought. Assuming this is an IDE drive...

Timothy.

One alternative would be to think for a while, decide on
a future partitioning scheme, create a small initial partition
and install a minimalistic system, and once it's up and running
add partitions and shuffle stuff about.



Cheers,
Tink

I would really like to do that, actually that would be optmimal for me. This is why i was wondering, is there any programs to partition ext3 filesystems that i can run from my hd or floppy.

do you know of any programs that format ext3?

thanks-

-James

I honestly don't understand the question...

If you install the base system onto a say 4GB root
partition you'll have fdisk and mkext3fs at hand
after that?


Cheers,
Tink

IMHO, Debian does not keep up with the times, so it is possible that its kernel version does not support large disks. If it did, then you will not have this problem. Linux does not use the BIOS to calculate the hard drive geometry. My old Highpoint controller that can handle up to 50 GB. When I use DOS or Windows, it will only see 50 GB of my 120 GB hard drive. When I use Linux it sees the whole 120 GB of the hard drive. The kernel has to support large disks and as well as the utilities. To boot to Linux, the boot partition have to be less than or equal to the limit that the BIOS can calculate. It does help to set the hard drives to LBA in the BIOS.

Knoppix is capable of creating and formatting very large partitions. Any Live Linux CD/DVD distributions can do the same too.

BTW, do not use any programs to do any tricks to see the full drive because it will make it harder to boot to Linux after installation.

excellent i do have a knoppix distro on hand. How do you create ext3 partitions with it?