[PLUG] Linux and >137G IDE Drives

[AthlonRob]

On Thu, 2003-11-06 at 22:06, Robert Kopp wrote:
> I was thinking about getting another hard drive for
> either internal or external use, so I wandered into
> Circuit City. My eyes nearly popped when I saw a WD
> 160G drive, $90 after rebate. Oh, boy! What a steal!

Damn... if only I had $90 to spend right now!  A 160GB drive... wow.

> So I open the box, and out slides this controller
> card. Except for the lastest systems, they say, you
> need to use this controller because the drive is
> larger than 137G, Drivers are included for Windows, of
> course.
> 
> Does Linux suffer from the same limitation? If so,
> does it have its own drivers? If not, can the drive be
> used without the card, merely sacrificing some of the
> drive's capacity, which is gargantuan? At least, by my
> standards? BTW, the PCI card is for 2.1-compliant
> systems. My HP Pavilion 7950 is fairly new, so can I
> be pretty confident that this requirement is met?

This has come up on alt.os.linux.slackware quite a few times in the last
few weeks.  I'm pretty sure it just came down to needing to use a recent
kernel.  AFAIK, the controller you use shouldn't be an issue.

Hopefully somebody here knows for sure.  Since my biggest hard drive is
a 40GB drive (just got a second one, as a matter of fact, I don't know
what to do with all this space!  :-)... I didn't pay much attention to
the threads in AOLS.

> With hard drive capacity increasing continuously, I'm
> sure that many potential upgraders would be interested
> in the answers to these questions.
> 
> Oh, yes. If it doesn't seem suitable for installation
> inside the computer, could it be used in a FireWire
> enclosure without the controller? 

If you're using Firewire, the controller is going to be in the
enclosure, I believe, so any controllers inside your system shouldn't
matter.

Rob