Necessary partitions

tuxrules · 07-23-2004, 02:35 PM

well well...i created a vfat partition (/dev/hdb10) in linux using

mkfs.vfat /dev/hdb10

now this partition shows up in windows disk management but i dont see it in explorer (like a drive letter D). I know this question is not related to linux and hence may be out of this forum's objective. I want to know did I do something wrong while making the filesystem or is it permissions????

Thanks,

linmix · 07-24-2004, 03:04 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by bluemak
Having a seperate boot partition is useful if your linux partition goes over the "8GB limit". Some disk drives/ BIOS will not boot the operating system if the linux partition extends beyond 1024 cylinders. (As I understand, im not an expert)

I think I know where the confusion came from. I just read the following in the GRUB wiki

Quote:

Error 18: Selected cylinder exceeds maximum supported by BIOS
This error is returned when a read is attempted at a linear block address beyond the end of the BIOS translated area. This generally happens if your disk is larger than the BIOS can handle (512MB for (E)IDE disks on older machines or larger than 8GB on others.).

In more practical terms this means the BIOS is unable to start executing the kernel because the kernel is not located within the block it can access at boot up time.

This can be circumvented by creating a boot partition at the beginning of the disk that is completely within the first 1023 cylinders of the harddrive. This partition will contain the kernel.