Date: Thu, 29 Dec 2005 10:04:28 -0800 From: "Gayn Winters" <gayn.winters@bristolsystems.com> To: <freebsd-questions@freebsd.org> Subject: RE: New IDE drive in old PC Message-ID: <00f801c60ca2$4f7dfd50$6501a8c0@workdog> In-Reply-To: <200512291718.18306.list-freebsd-2004@morbius.sent.com>
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> On Behalf Of RW > Sent: Thursday, December 29, 2005 9:18 AM > On Wednesday 28 December 2005 07:14, Robert Slade wrote: > > On Tue, 2005-12-27 at 22:12, Robert Ames wrote: > > > I have an old (very old) ASUS P5 motherboard running FreeBSD 5.4. > > > The boot disk is a 40MB Western Digital WD400 IDE drive > jumpered to > > > only use 32MB so it can be booted from since the BIOS in this PC > > > (the latest and greatest) can't deal with anything larger > than 32MB. > > > This PC is working well for me and I don't want to upgrade it. > > > However I would like to add a lot of disk space. So my question > > > is, can I go out and buy a new 300 GB (or whatever) IDE disk and > > > attach it to the secondary IDE controller and hope to use all 300 > > > GB? I will still use the old disk for booting and to hold the OS. > > > The new disk will be just for data. If this will "just > work" how do > > > I configure the BIOS so the PC will boot with the large > drive installed? > > > > Robert, > > > > If you had to jumper the boot disk for it to work with the > BIOS of the motherboard, then the chances are that you would have to do the same > > with the 2nd hard drive. > > > > ISTR that ASUS produced updated BIOS' for most of their > motherboards to get around this. Have a look at their website to see if there is and > > upgrade. There is also a area on the site for questions > such as yours. > > I would have thought the main issue is support for 48-bit > LBA. The limit for 32-bit LBA is 137GB (128 GiB). Since the OP wants more disk space and somehow can't upgrade this old BIOS (the preferred option), separate the issue into two: 1. How to boot 2. How to access the large disk. I haven't tried it, but if you installed the large drive as a second disk, then you could boot off the older (jumpered even) hard drive. Even if the BIOS doesn't see the second hard drive, it probably won't go belly up. I would think FreeBSD would then see the second drive when it booted and handle it correctly (since FreeBSD doesn't use the BIOS for access.) Map the second drive as /data and enjoy. I recommend putting the old drive as primary (master) on the first IDE channel and putting the new drive as slave or as master on the second IDE channel. I don't think trying this risks data on your old drive, but back it up anyway! Good luck, -gayn Bristol Systems Inc. 714/532-6776 www.bristolsystems.com
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