From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Thu Dec 29 19:20:58 2005 Return-Path: X-Original-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id BF7F716A428 for ; Thu, 29 Dec 2005 19:20:58 +0000 (GMT) (envelope-from freebsd-questions-local@be-well.ilk.org) Received: from mail1.sea5.speakeasy.net (mail1.sea5.speakeasy.net [69.17.117.3]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id BD03B43D7C for ; Thu, 29 Dec 2005 19:20:47 +0000 (GMT) (envelope-from freebsd-questions-local@be-well.ilk.org) Received: (qmail 21969 invoked from network); 29 Dec 2005 19:20:44 -0000 Received: from dsl092-078-145.bos1.dsl.speakeasy.net (HELO be-well.ilk.org) ([66.92.78.145]) (envelope-sender ) by mail1.sea5.speakeasy.net (qmail-ldap-1.03) with SMTP for ; 29 Dec 2005 19:20:44 -0000 Received: by be-well.ilk.org (Postfix, from userid 1147) id 3DBD728423; Thu, 29 Dec 2005 14:20:43 -0500 (EST) Sender: lowell@be-well.ilk.org To: Travis Poppe References: <200512291202.51955.tlp@liquidx.org> From: Lowell Gilbert Date: 29 Dec 2005 14:20:43 -0500 In-Reply-To: <200512291202.51955.tlp@liquidx.org> Message-ID: <444q4ryak4.fsf@be-well.ilk.org> Lines: 33 User-Agent: Gnus/5.09 (Gnus v5.9.0) Emacs/21.3 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Cc: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org, freebsd-hardware@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Harddrive size being reported incorrectly? X-BeenThere: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list Reply-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org List-Id: User questions List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Thu, 29 Dec 2005 19:20:59 -0000 Travis Poppe writes: > Hello, > > I've recently purchased an IDE 320GB Western Digital WD3200JB-22KFA0 > harddrive for use in my FreeBSD 6.0-RELEASE fileserver. The BIOS in the system > reports the drive as being a 320GB, but FreeBSD (dmesg) sees it as a 305245MB > (or 298GB drive) in two separate machines. When it has finally been formatted > for use, I get 289GB of available space. > > Now, I understand that harddrive manufacturers measure things differently > (1000kbytes per gbyte rather than 1024, or something like that) than > expected, but I've been told by a few people that I should be getting around > 305-312GB of available space after the drive has been formatted. Well, no. 305245MB is (305245x1024x1024), or just a *hair* larger than 320 x 10e10 bytes. So what FreeBSD reports is exactly what you should expect from the manufacturer's specification. > sysinstall had to adjust the drive geometry because the reported one was > 'invalid'. I tried to manually specify the geometry BIOS reported, but this > too was rejected as invalid. > > BIOS Geometry-CYL/HD/SECT: 65535/16/255 C/H/S geometries are (more or less) fictitious these days anyway. I let the installer do what it wants, and haven't had a problem in a long time. > Am I really getting the full potential out of this drive, or is something > wrong? Looks like things are working fine.