[wplug] Large drive/old (small) bios.

[Luquilla Hughes]

Thanks Dave great info.(somtime I will tell you about the bug I found in DOS 
fdisk today, if you didn't already know about it.)
    I had S.u.s.e installed on it before switching(hdc) to the larger Hard 
drive and dmesg said that it was about 32GB as near as I can tell. The drive 
says it is C/H/S of 16383/16/63 and dmesg said it was 65XXX/16/63, the 65XXX 
part I can't remember exactly but I know it was the one that didn't agree.
    So as far as I can tell I will be able to use a good chunk of the drive 
(although the 30GB would have been cheaper, but I am ready for the next 
upgrade now) for Linux and I can let windows use the entire 2.5GB 
primary(hda) drive for itself and it will never be the wiser.
    More likely knowing what I know now, from spending a good portion of the 
day on the Compaq support site, I will instead put the other smaller drive I 
got at the show in the compaq and save the big drive for something that can 
really use it. before I go I wanted to share a few things I learned at the 
compaq support site today.
1) Those older machines were never meant to handle those size drive and 
compaq is not going to support them.<-- this is not a direct quote, 
paraphrase --> 'go buy a new compaq'.
2) Sometimes, angry customers will leave messages on the help forum.( 
sometimes they register a domain -->www.compaqsucks.com)
3) The people who work in the forum don't always answer the same question 
from different people with distinct answers, I believe the phrase is called 
cut and paste.
4) microsoft-centric-proprietary-software that encomapasses the bios is not 
as cool as it sounds, dont believe me try reading the help forum at compaq. 
The guy whose sun wiped the bios is example A.
5) ALWAYS MAKE BACKUPS, really they arn't kidding
6) answering to many "my computer won't support these new large hard drive" 
whiners tends to make a support person cranky.

Still in the end I have to say the case is really nice, 3 thumbs screws and 
shes open, all of the cards rest on an expansion chasis so their easy to get 
at.

>From: David Tessitor <dttessitor at home.com>
>Reply-To: wplug at wplug.org
>To: wplug at wplug.org
>Subject: Re: [wplug] Large drive/old (small) bios.
>Date: Wed, 21 Feb 2001 18:50:57 -0500
>
>From everything I've read and from my own experience, as soon as your OS 
>takes
>over from the bios there should be no problem, provided the OS can 
>recognize the
>large drive.  Linux should be able to recognize it, but NT needs to be 
>using
>later service packs and I assume the same for W95.
>
>----


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