Large Disk HOWTO

Andries Brouwer, aeb@cwi.nl

1. The problem

2. Summary

3. Units and Sizes

• 3.1 Sectorsize
• 3.2 Disksize

4. Disk Access

• 4.1 BIOS Disk Access and the 1024 cylinder limit
• 4.2 History of BIOS and IDE limits

5. Booting

• 5.1 LILO and the `linear' option
• 5.2 1024 cylinders is not 1024 cylinders

6. Disk geometry, partitions and `overlap'

7. Translation and Disk Managers

8. Kernel disk translation for IDE disks

• 8.1 EZD
• 8.2 DM6:DDO
• 8.3 DM6:AUX
• 8.4 DM6:MBR
• 8.5 PTBL

9. Consequences

10. Details

• 10.1 IDE details - the seven geometries
• 10.2 SCSI details

11. The Linux IDE 8 GiB limit

• 11.1 BIOS complications
• 11.2 Jumpers

12. The Linux 65535 cylinder limit

13. Extended and logical partitions

14. Problem solving

• 14.1 Problem: Linux invents the wrong geometry for my disk.
• 14.2 Nonproblem: Identical disks have different geometry?
• 14.3 Nonproblem: fdisk sees much more room than df?