Bios doesn't recognize full capacity of hard drive.

tnkrtrn · n00b Joined: 16 Mar 2004 Posts: 19

I've had a couple of problems here and there installing gentoo but I belive this can be classified as out of the ordinary. My bios see's my hard drive as a 137 gig and linux see's it as a 160 gig (which it is). First I had an error loading os problem. After I ran a maxtor utitlity (wrote something to the mbr) I got the repeating grub problem. I've solved that though, by using the floppy to boot (installed grub on the floppy). Now it boots but until it gets to the "installing user fonts" the screen is fuzzy, yes fuzzy. After that it clears up and everything seems to be fine. I boot from a floppy which loads the os from the hard drive. I heard that linux doesn't care what size the bios thinks the hard drive is. Is that true or will my files become corrupt because linux see the hard drive for what it is and the bios doesn't. Thanks.

teknomage1 · Posted: Wed Mar 31, 2004 4:00 am Post subject:

your files are safe but you may want to consider moving your boot partition to before that 137GB mark to avoid having to use that boot floppy.

SirGalahad · n00b Joined: 03 Aug 2002 Posts: 3

What is the partition layout like on the disk? Did you create an approx 50MB partition? Do you have another drive you can 'dd' to and then remake three partitions (boot, swap and root) and the dd back?

I would suggest looking for a BIOS update as well.

HTH[/quote]

tnkrtrn · n00b Joined: 16 Mar 2004 Posts: 19

technomage

Where would I move my boot partition...right now it is on /dev/hda1. I really don't mind using the floppy (actually I don't think I have a choice).

SirGalahad

This is a fresh install. I've got a 32meg boot partiton, 512meg for the swap and the balance of the 160gig as my root. I'd love to find an update for the bios but my boards manufactuer doesn't have one.

Sorry if what I said doesn't make sense. I'm a linux noob.

chINeSe mIDgEts · Posted: Wed Mar 31, 2004 5:17 am Post subject:

maybe you could flash your BIOS for an update that would recognized your full hd space?
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tnkrtrn · n00b Joined: 16 Mar 2004 Posts: 19

I'd love to do that but my motherboard manufacture doesn't have an update. I've got a PCChips 810mlr.

hardcore · l33t Joined: 01 Nov 2003 Posts: 626 Location: MSU, MI

You might wanna check this page: http://www.pcchips.com.tw/BIOS.html

and this site as well because it lists how they have renamed the versions, etc, I believe yours is now "M810L".

http://www.pcchips.com.tw/news.html#name