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Having trouble installing a piece of hardware? Want to know if that peripheral is compatible with Linux?
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Distribution: Just about anything... so long as it is Debain based.
Posts: 297
Rep:
Large HDD not recognized by BIOS
I'm working with a friend to load his system with PinkTie 9 (RedHat9).
The issue is this... he put in a rather large (120GB) drive to use to install Linux onto. The issue is that the BIOS won't detect the dirve.
Interesting part is that when booting to Linux for the install it found the dirve fine. I thought all would be well; however, when booting ater the install Grub throws a disk drive error and will not boot. So, now he's out his Win2k install as well as the Linux one we just did. BUMMER.
Flashing the BIOS isn't an option as this is some noname board. Anyone hava a suggestion?
Oh, I've also tried going into the BIOS to manually configure the drive info.
BIOS issues I've seen, maybe, maybe not part of solving your situation:
LBA mode on.
Verify if the BIOS supports large disks.
Turn off boot sector virus protection, if enabled.
Allow writing to the boot sector, if disabled.
Be certain that UDMA is set the same was as the GRUB loader config.
Try auto configuration in BIOS, if BIOS allows it.
Might also be a good time to check for BIOS updates for that system.
1] What, no boot floppy? ;-) NM.
2] The pink/red CDs are bootable. Look for a rescue mode (press F2 or F3 at the boot prompt), or just switch consoles (ctrl-alt-F2/F3) after booted into install mode and then try mounting the hard disk and try reading the grub config file.
BTW, never heard of a no-name mobo.... mobos always have manufacturers which always have names, even if you can't figure it out, maybe some people here CAN figure out what you have.
Distribution: Just about anything... so long as it is Debain based.
Posts: 297
Original Poster
Rep:
There are no clear markings on the board acording to the owner (As mentioned before, I'm assisting... not mentioned before is that I'm assisting remotely). If need be I'll try to get him to make the treck up here so I can dismantle the machine.
Anyone used the Linux BIOS project? Wonder if that's an option.
He did make a boot disk but says that's not working either. Not sure why... I'll check with him.
I'll try the ol' Knoppix disk to try to read the grub config. Thanks for that suggestion.
The point of the matter is though that his BIOS simply isn't seeing the drive. That's got to be the issue. Can Grub deal with that or am I out of luck until I get BIOS to see the drive.
What if I put the /boot partition on hda instead? Will that work?
charon79m: Do you mean that the drive isn’t being detected or that the full size isn’t being detected? Also, is there a single drive present or are two drives present? Is there another type of drive like a CD drive on the same IDE channel?
If the drive isn’t detected at all, it could be as simple as a error in how the jumpers on the drive(s) is/are set (single, master, slave, cable select, etc.). Also, if there is something like a CD drive on the same channel, make sure there is no master/slave conflict. It’s easy to overlook that one.
If the drive is detected, but the full size isn’t seen, you either have a simple BIOS problem that calls for an update or you are fighting a resident BIOS “fix” (e.g. Western Digital EZ-BIOS left behind by EZ-Drive during the drive installation). Ask the person to write down the initial screen text during the boot (which usually contains some BIOS info) and search for the text in Google. Sometimes you get lucky and find something useful. If it’s a really old system, you may not be able to fix the BIOS issue. For a nice background on the subject of historical BIOS-related drive size limitations, see (Western Digital FAQ “Operating System and BIOS limitations - 137GB, 32GB, 8.4GB” ):
Distribution: Just about anything... so long as it is Debain based.
Posts: 297
Original Poster
Rep:
LinuxSrilanka, the drive is already partitioned. That was done durring the install. It's at boot that it is now failing.
WhatsHisName/dunbar,
The dirve is physically not recognized by the BIOS. From your link it looks like the 32GB barrier symptoms.
The Master/Slave jumpers are set correctly.
There are physically 2 hard drives on the primary IDE chanel. The fist (4GB) is the master and the new drive (120GB) is the slave. When booting, if he has the BIOS set to automatically detect it hangs. If he sets it to "none" it will post.
There is a CD-Rom on the secondary IDE chanel.
My question is this.... Linux does not need BIOS to see drives to be able to access them, but does GRUB need to have the BIOS recognize the drives in order to boot from them?
If it does, can I then just have him put /boot as a second partition on the Primar Master and then boot linux that way?
charon79m: Before you give up on the BIOS, try two more things. First, the older BIOS often have a “wait time” (sorry, I can’t remember the exact terminology used) of a few seconds in the IDE configuration section. Try increasing the wait time. I remember working on a system that would not post with autoconfigured wait times of 3 sec with dual drives, but would post with 5 sec waits. The 3 sec waits worked fine with single drives. Second, have you tried “booting” the system with only the 120GB drive present as a single drive and see if it will post (but obviously will not boot)? I have seen oddball things like that work with no really obvious reason why it worked.
Also, you might try installing an PCI IDE controller (about US$30.00), but that is often not a trivial task in older systems.
I like the idea about booting from the smaller drive and then mounting the partition on the larger drive, but haven’t tried it before.
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