Mandrake 10.1 only recognize a 200GB Harddrive as 128GB

I have a Maxtore 200GB harddrive. I tried to install Mandrake 10.1 official release. When I got to the pratition step, it only recognize 128GB. How do I use the full harddrive space?

Thanks.

I don't have the answer, but I'm sure glad you asked this question, for I was thinking of getting a drive bigger than my 120GB one next time I replace a hard drive.

Now I will wait and see what folks have to say here about this, before getting one that size.

Do your bios support that large of a harddrive? Typically 128gb is a bios type limitation. Another user that had such a problem:
http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...hreadid=155433

Yes, my motherboard support this harddrive. I am pretty sure about it because I had Windows XP installed on this harddrive earlier. I had 3 NTFS partitions for Windows XP and it recognized the harddrive as 200gb.

Linux recognized all three partitions, but the size is smaller for each partition, which add up to 128gb. The total size that linux recognize is also 128gb after I deleted all three NTFS partitions.

So at this point it looks like the Icelandic user whose older thread Indech pointed out, had a BIOS that was misleading, as both Windows and Linux could only use part of the drive, while kt8993 has a drive that is usable by his computer in its full size, as Windows has no problem with it, but Linux can't deal with it.

I will do some Google-searching later today and see what I come up with. This is a subject I don't feel technically confident about, though, so I hope in the meantime some of the technical people on LQ will respond and clarify the problem.

Originally posted by jonr I will do some Google-searching later today and see what I come up with.

For the record, I spent about a half hour with Google and didn't come up with anything meaningful or definite.

At least I tried. Sorry.

I'm not sure what the problem is. I still wonder if you have a hardware limitation and that windows is lying to you. For information on the 128gb limitation check this site out.
http://www.dewassoc.com/kbase/hard_d...e_barriers.htm

The only other option that I can think of is that Mandrake's install kernel doesn't support lba48(what is needed to get over the limitation). You could try another distro and see whether it still has trouble finding the full size of the hard drive. However that problem should only exist in kernel's 2.4.18(+/- 1) and lower. The only current release of a distribution that I know of that has that problem is Debian Woody.

Isn't it odd that with the popularity of big-capacity (as we see capacity this year, anyway!) hard drives, this problem is not more prevalent?

I will certainly defer purchase of anything over 120 GB till I know the coast is clear! I did buy a 120 GB Seagate Barracuda drive a few months
ago and installed it with no problem whatever, full capacity recognized and usable. I was about to buy a 160 GB drive when I read something on
a package in the store that mentioned trouble with some systems recognizing more than 128 GB. To play it safe, I chose the smaller size. Now I'm
glad I did!

Good news and bad news. Good news is that I was able to use 188GB of 200GB. Bad news is I lost 12GB....

Here's what I did:
I used the Maxtor Blaster utility to partition the harddrive into
50gb
1.2gb
50gb
99gb

During installation at the partitioning step, I deleted the two 50GB partition and convert them to Journalized FS and did the same to make 1.2gb Swap partition. I couldn't delete the 99gb and convert it to Journalized FS. If I did, the 99gb size will reduce to much smaller partition.

The harddrive manufactures calculates the space on harddrive different from the OS.
200 000 000 / 1024 / 1024 = 190 GB as the computer sees it (and you)
/Kristian

To use hard drives bigger than 120 GB, you just need to recompile your kernel. For 2.4.x kernels, try to find "Auto-Geometry Resizing Support" and enable it. For 2.6.x kernels, try to find "Support for Large Block Devices" and enable it. If Linux calculates the correct geometry and cfdisk or fdisk does not, you will need to upgrade fdisk and cfdisk. Try to use sfdisk to make partitions if fdisk or cfdisk fails.

If you are using Linux with a 200 GB hard drive and the BIOS does not have support for 48-bit LBA, Linux will still calculate the full capacity. Check the dmesg logs to find out.

The human capacity 200 GB (200 X 10^9) means 186.264 GB in machine langauge.

(200 X 10^9) / 1024^3 = 186.264 GB

I am pretty new to Linux. May I know how do I do the following?
"For 2.6.x kernels, try to find "Support for Large Block Devices" and enable it."

Thanks.

Kim