Date: Sun, 03 Sep 2000 02:57:52 +0200 From: Siegbert Baude <siegbert.baude@gmx.de> To: Kevin Oberman <oberman@es.net>, "freebsd-questions@freebsd.org" <freebsd-questions@freebsd.org> Subject: Re: Problems with slice setup in Fujitsu disk Message-ID: <39B1A210.999400BF@gmx.de> References: <200009022342.e82NgQU27033@ptavv.es.net>
next in thread | previous in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help
Hi Kevin, > Thanks for the suggestion, but I don't think it will work for my > disk. It's 13.6 GB and the upper limit on CHS addressing, to the best > of my knowledge, is 8.4 GB. That is true, and I never checked how fdisk will react if you specify a cylinder number >1023 (thatīs actually the point, the place reserved in the partition table will allow a maximum of 1024 cylinders #0-#1023). Some partition managers will calculate the actual CHS values and store the LBA values along with 1023 as cylinder number. I donīt know how fdisk handles this. > Also, like many large disks, the number of > sectors per track increases as you move to the outside of the disk > from 286 to 502. The result is that it's really impossible to do CHS > addressing. This is physically true, but your HD controller will hide this to your OS (at least all disks I know work this way). You will have a constant number of sectors (in LBA mode normally 255) over the whole disk logically. > I suspect that the fact that the disk can't be treated in any way like > a CHS disk may well have something to do with the problem. And it's > also possible that the fact that it was initially sliced when using > the old wd driver has some bearing on this. I wouldnīt agree with the latter. Partition tables and disklabels are just numbers on the disk, which arenīt changed by the way a driver is accessing. According to my experience, problems are buried in the disklabels. Do you have another partition manager software to verify your partition tables? I used for example Linux fdisk (there is also a mini Linux distro fitting on a single floppy) or Ranish Partition Manager (booted from a DOS floppy). I never found an error in the partition tables, but had done dumb things to my disklables. Is it possible to redo the whole procedure, i.e. zero the first two sectors of your disk and redoing your fdisk by hand from some existing system on a different HD? Using fdisk manually will allow every correction you want, before it actually writes anything to disk. I prefer this to some automagic, I donīt understand. I really am running out of ideas, what happened to your disk. Some weeks ago I put some questions on the list regarding the way the kernel is recognizing disk mapping on boot time (as these are wrong values for my disks) and fdisk behaving on extended partitions. But got no answer, maybe because the questions were too long, or it was the wrong list. So for now I donīt really understand whatīs going on in the ata driver. Looked into the source, but got only some limited answers due to my lack of C experience. But to be fair, I never noticed any errors in the use of my disk, so the kernel and drivers can handle this situation somehow. Hope this is at least a cold comfort. Ciao Siegbert To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message
Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?39B1A210.999400BF>