I recently purchased a 160GB hard drive (Maxtor 6Y160P0) to add to my RedHat 9.0 system. It's an older PC that I turned into a web server.

Here's my system info:
AuthenticAMD AMD-K6(tm) 3D processor 400 MHZ
Memory: 96 MB
IDE hda: IBM-DCAA-34330 8400/16/63
IDE hdb: Maxtor 6Y160P0 19929/255/63
Kernel: 2.4.20-28.9
MB: ASUS P5A

Note: The new HD supports ATA 133, but my MB only supports UDMA 33.
Note: Linux recogonizes the new HD's geometry as 19929/255/63, but Maxtor's documentation says 16383/16/63. Could this be a problem?

I successfully installed and partitioned the new hard drive using fdisk. However, I was only able to utilize 153GB of the hard drive (that's another issue). When I added an ext3 filesystem to the 153GB partition, everything appeared to format as usual (no errors). But I got an error when I tried to mount it. It was unable to detect an ext3 filesystem. For some reason the filesystem was not added. I followed the RedHat 9.0 documentation exactly.

Through my experimentation, I was able to successfully create ext3 filesystems if I made smaller partitions. I currently have it divided in 2 equal 76GB partitions, ext3 formatted and mounted.

Question 1: How do I make one large partition and add an ext3 filesystem?
Question 2: How can I use the full 160GB of my hard drive?

Thanks.

The answer to the second question will probably be : you can't. Probably your disk only has 153GB on it. I know that the 80GB maxtor drives only show as 76 MB, so 153 for a 160GB disk sounds like the same problem.

I don't know the size limit for ext3 systems, but apparently it's less than 160 GB Maybe you can use a reiserfs filesystem instead

i'm thinking the maxiumum size of a ext2 or ext3 filesystem is 127 megs.

and that's definately true about hard disk sizes. some companies define
a gig as 1000 megs and some as 1024 megs. same thing with megs.
some as 1000k some as 1024 k.

so they could sort of stretch the size like that..

I hope it's 127 gig

the other filesystems, jfs, xfs, and reiserfs, should be able to make one
big partition.

I;ve encountered the same size problem my maxtor drives.

Besides that, I've discovered that maxtor is shoddy brand anyway, I've had 3 of their drive go out within 3-5 years of purchase.

Thanks for the input. I'll try to put a ReiserFS on it this evening.

However, according to the ext2 homepage (http://e2fsprogs.sourceforge.net/ext2.html), the ext2 max FS size is 4 TB. So I should be able to make an ext2 or ext3 FS that is 153 GB. So I think there may be something else wrong.

Would someone care to post where they found this "127 Gb" partition limit with ext3? I have a 1.5 TB partition on a RAID that is doing just fine.

G.

i musta been thinking about a swap partition, or i just made it up. who
knows.

Do you know there is a 137Gb limit on old systems ?
I didn't check your specifics but that would explain why you can format the disk with 80G partitions but not when left whole. And it would also explain the discrepancies during the system scan.
I you want to read more check : http://www.dewassoc.com/kbase/hard_d...e_barriers.htm
for example.
Perhaps it is possible to flash a new bios version? or use a ide controller card ?

Thanks cdlen. I think you nailed it.

I need to buy an ATA 133 PCI card.