Date: Thu, 29 Dec 2005 10:14:00 -0800 From: "Gayn Winters" <gayn.winters@bristolsystems.com> To: <freebsd-questions@freebsd.org> Subject: RE: New IDE drive in old PC Message-ID: <00fb01c60ca3$a7b7c900$6501a8c0@workdog> In-Reply-To: <00f801c60ca2$4f7dfd50$6501a8c0@workdog>
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> On Behalf Of Gayn Winters > Sent: Thursday, December 29, 2005 10:04 AM > > 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! Chuck Swinger's caveat will apply to the above: FreeBSD will use LBA addressing modes, even if your BIOS does not support it. However, to access a drive above 137GB, your hardware needs to support 48-bit LBA. However, you can get a PCI ATA controller to do the job which is cheap and convenient, or simply update your MB to something newer... -- -Chuck -gayn Bristol Systems Inc. 714/532-6776 www.bristolsystems.com
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