[wplug] Install Resolution -- Extended Int13h LBA 32-bit sector boot limit

[Bryan J. Smith]

On Thu, 2007-07-26 at 14:20 -0400, Michael H. Semcheski wrote:
> So... I haven't gotten to a successful installation yet, but I think I
> figured out what the problem was.
> I had a 3ware 9650se driving a 4x750 raid5.  What I forgot to was
> carve (I think this is the term) a boot volume out of the main array.
> That is, now I've got one 50GB drive, and one 2045GB drive, but they
> have the same constituent drives.

Oh, yes, you will have 16-bit PC BIOS Extended Int13h Disk Service
issues if your booting volume crosses 2048GiB/2TiB (2199GB/2.2TB).  You
need to break that.  It's the Logical Block Addressing (LBA) 32-bit
sector boot limit -- 2^32 * 512 bytes/sector = 2TiB.

Good catch!

> Many RAID cards allow you to create a smaller boot parition (which
> looks like a seperate scsi disk to the OS) but is part of the main
> array.
> Like I said, I haven't finished, because I'm in the process of
> rebuilding the array.  But I'll bet thats what the problem was.

I'm sure you pegged it.  Doh, should have thought of that one when you
stated 4x750GB in RAID-5.

> "Come on guys... Its all ball bearings these days.

"Oh, you've remodeled the garage. Must have cost you hundreds."


-- 
Bryan J. Smith         Professional, Technical Annoyance
mailto:b.j.smith at ieee.org   http://thebs413.blogspot.com
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        Fission Power:  An Inconvenient Solution