can't read my new hard drive

can't read my new hard drive

[rob.rice]

I just got a new WD2500JBRTL hard drive I can format it reiser filesystem I 
can write to it I can ls it BUT when ever I try to read from (cp,du,mv,tar) 
it my computer locks up it also locks up when I try to run any reiser file 
system util on it right now I'm waiting to hear from award's bios update site 
for an update for my bios because my bios can't see that this hard drive is 
larger than 137 GB BUT my kernel can see this hard drive as a 250GB hard 
drive is there some hdparm setting I can use to fix this or some module I can 
load or is this hard drive to large to be used in one partion with reiser 
filesystem or is there a kernel patch I need to use in order to accesses this 
drive 


boycott western digitall for not support linux (and tell them so I have told 
them this is the last hard drive I will buy form them until they support 
linux)
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Re: can't read my new hard drive

[Ray Olszewski]

At 09:28 PM 1/2/1999 -0500, rob.rice wrote:

>I just got a new WD2500JBRTL hard drive I can format it reiser filesystem I
>can write to it I can ls it BUT when ever I try to read from (cp,du,mv,tar)
>it my computer locks up it also locks up when I try to run any reiser file
>system util on it right now I'm waiting to hear from award's bios update site
>for an update for my bios because my bios can't see that this hard drive is
>larger than 137 GB BUT my kernel can see this hard drive as a 250GB hard
>drive is there some hdparm setting I can use to fix this or some module I can
>load or is this hard drive to large to be used in one partion with reiser
>filesystem or is there a kernel patch I need to use in order to accesses this
>drive
>
>boycott western digitall for not support linux (and tell them so I have told
>them this is the last hard drive I will buy form them until they support
>linux)

Calm down, Rob. Based on what you have reported, it is way too early to 
call for a boycott, or even to complain at all to WD.

The 137 GB problem you see is a BIOS problem. Maybe the latest BIOSes get 
around it (I don't own anything new enough to test this), but most older 
ones don't. Linux can see the full 250 GB because it doesn't use the BIOS 
values to get drive capacity information. Last I knew, Windows (at least 
through Win2K) had a worse time with these super-big drives than Linux 
does, because it does rely on the BIOS settings ... I have a couple of 
unused auxiliary IDE controllers that Maxtor packaged with its largest 
drives for awhile to let Windows users get around the 137 GB limit.

If you are not using this drive as your root (/) filesystem ... in 
practice, that usually means it is not /dev/hda ... then ignore the BIOS 
problem and let Linux handle that part. If you are using it for boot and 
root, you'll have to partition it, at least enough that the BIOS and lilo 
(or your bootloader of choice) can find the kernel to load it.

I haven't yet used a drive this size as the boot drive, but if I were to do 
so, I'd probably try something like this:

         /dev/hda1       about 50 MB, mount as /boot
         /dev/hda2       swap, whatever size you need or want
         /dev/hda3       about 120 GB, mount as /
         /dev/hda4       remainder, probably mount as /home

This is probably not the only arrangement that would work, and I can't 
actually guarantee that it would work. But it likely would. Oh, and I would 
make hda1 ext2, just to be safe.

Beyond that ... please describe the problem more carefully. You say ls 
works, and ls does require reading the drive. With a 250 GB drive, the 
other commands you mention all either do (du) or might (depending on 
unreported details) involve a WHOLE LOT of reading on a 250 GB drive, which 
can take a long time (minutes, even if everything IS workingg right). So 
please test more systematically, and please be as exact as you can about 
what you are calling "locks up" (for example, does the console not respond 
if you press ENTER while a cp or mv or tar operation is running? if you run 
top in another xterm or console or telnet or ssh session, can you switch to 
it and does it continue to run?). Can you cat or more a short text file, or 
does that cause a hang? What about df?

One thing you should check (this is true of any IDE drive, any size) is 
that you have DMA enabled. If you use hdparm to query the drive settings, 
it will report using_dma as on or off. If it is off, set it (as root) with

         hdparm -d 1 /dev/hd*

replacing * with the right drive designator. If DMA is not enabled, the 
sorts of operations you report cas causing the "lock ups" will be painfully 
slow with the size drive you have, and annoying slow with any modern drive 
(by which I mean 40 GB and up).

I don't run reiserfs here, but I've run drives ranging from 160 GB to 250 
GB for well over a year now, using ext2 and ext3, with no trouble at all, 
in non-boot settings.

Finally, if you want technical help with kernel details, it helps to 
mention what kernel you are using and what distro it is from (because all 
distros I know of customize their kernels, at least a little bit).




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Re: can't read my new hard drive

[Jim Nelson]

Ray Olszewski wrote:
> At 09:28 PM 1/2/1999 -0500, rob.rice wrote:
> 
>> I just got a new WD2500JBRTL hard drive I can format it reiser 
>> filesystem I
>> can write to it I can ls it BUT when ever I try to read from 
>> (cp,du,mv,tar)
>> it my computer locks up it also locks up when I try to run any reiser 
>> file
>> system util on it right now I'm waiting to hear from award's bios 
>> update site
>> for an update for my bios because my bios can't see that this hard 
>> drive is
>> larger than 137 GB BUT my kernel can see this hard drive as a 250GB hard
>> drive is there some hdparm setting I can use to fix this or some 
>> module I can
>> load or is this hard drive to large to be used in one partion with reiser
>> filesystem or is there a kernel patch I need to use in order to 
>> accesses this
>> drive
>>
>> boycott western digitall for not support linux (and tell them so I 
>> have told
>> them this is the last hard drive I will buy form them until they support
>> linux)
> 
> 
> Calm down, Rob. Based on what you have reported, it is way too early to 
> call for a boycott, or even to complain at all to WD.
> 
> The 137 GB problem you see is a BIOS problem. Maybe the latest BIOSes 
> get around it (I don't own anything new enough to test this), but most 
> older ones don't. Linux can see the full 250 GB because it doesn't use 
> the BIOS values to get drive capacity information. Last I knew, Windows 
> (at least through Win2K) had a worse time with these super-big drives 
> than Linux does, because it does rely on the BIOS settings ... I have a 
> couple of unused auxiliary IDE controllers that Maxtor packaged with its 
> largest drives for awhile to let Windows users get around the 137 GB limit.
> 

I had the exact same problem with a 160 GB WD drive I got from Sam's Club - except 
the BIOS on my media server had the 33 GB limit.  BTW, Western Digital still ships 
ATA/100 cards with some of their drives (it takes a little shopping) - they come 
with Promise IDE controllers.

 From dmesg:

ide: Assuming 33MHz system bus speed for PIO modes; override with idebus=xx
PIIX4: IDE controller at PCI slot 0000:00:07.1
PIIX4: chipset revision 1
PIIX4: not 100% native mode: will probe irqs later
     ide0: BM-DMA at 0xf000-0xf007, BIOS settings: hda:pio, hdb:pio
     ide1: BM-DMA at 0xf008-0xf00f, BIOS settings: hdc:pio, hdd:pio
Probing IDE interface ide0...
hda: ST340810A, ATA DISK drive
Using cfq io scheduler
ide0 at 0x1f0-0x1f7,0x3f6 on irq 14
Probing IDE interface ide1...
hdc: CD-RW IDE5224, ATAPI CD/DVD-ROM drive
ide1 at 0x170-0x177,0x376 on irq 15
PDC20268: IDE controller at PCI slot 0000:00:0f.0
PCI: Found IRQ 11 for device 0000:00:0f.0
PDC20268: chipset revision 2
PDC20268: ROM enabled at 0xe8000000
PDC20268: 100% native mode on irq 11
     ide2: BM-DMA at 0xe400-0xe407, BIOS settings: hde:pio, hdf:pio
     ide3: BM-DMA at 0xe408-0xe40f, BIOS settings: hdg:pio, hdh:pio
Probing IDE interface ide2...
hde: WDC WD1600JB-53EVA0, ATA DISK drive
ide2 at 0xd400-0xd407,0xd802 on irq 11
Probing IDE interface ide3...
Probing IDE interface ide3...
Probing IDE interface ide4...
ide4: Wait for ready failed before probe !
Probing IDE interface ide5...
ide5: Wait for ready failed before probe !
hda: max request size: 128KiB
hda: Host Protected Area detected.
         current capacity is 66055248 sectors (33820 MB)
         native  capacity is 78165360 sectors (40020 MB)
hda: 66055248 sectors (33820 MB) w/2048KiB Cache, CHS=65531/16/63, UDMA(33)
hda: cache flushes not supported
  hda: hda1 hda2 hda3 hda4
hde: max request size: 1024KiB
hde: 312581808 sectors (160041 MB) w/8192KiB Cache, CHS=19457/255/63, UDMA(100)
hde: cache flushes supported
  hde: hde1
hdc: ATAPI 52X CD-ROM CD-R/RW drive, 2048kB Cache, UDMA(33)

Notice how /dev/hda is limited by the BIOS, but /dev/hde is not?  Most add-on IDE 
controllers fix BIOS limitations - I've even got an old 486 server sitting in my 
closet that has an add-on ISA IDE card to let it use >1GB drives - pretty high-end 
back in the mid-90's.

> If you are not using this drive as your root (/) filesystem ... in 
> practice, that usually means it is not /dev/hda ... then ignore the BIOS 
> problem and let Linux handle that part. If you are using it for boot and 
> root, you'll have to partition it, at least enough that the BIOS and 
> lilo (or your bootloader of choice) can find the kernel to load it.
> 
> I haven't yet used a drive this size as the boot drive, but if I were to 
> do so, I'd probably try something like this:
> 
>         /dev/hda1       about 50 MB, mount as /boot
>         /dev/hda2       swap, whatever size you need or want
>         /dev/hda3       about 120 GB, mount as /
>         /dev/hda4       remainder, probably mount as /home
> 
> This is probably not the only arrangement that would work, and I can't 
> actually guarantee that it would work. But it likely would. Oh, and I 
> would make hda1 ext2, just to be safe.
> 
> Beyond that ... please describe the problem more carefully. You say ls 
> works, and ls does require reading the drive. With a 250 GB drive, the 
> other commands you mention all either do (du) or might (depending on 
> unreported details) involve a WHOLE LOT of reading on a 250 GB drive, 
> which can take a long time (minutes, even if everything IS workingg 
> right). So please test more systematically, and please be as exact as 
> you can about what you are calling "locks up" (for example, does the 
> console not respond if you press ENTER while a cp or mv or tar operation 
> is running? if you run top in another xterm or console or telnet or ssh 
> session, can you switch to it and does it continue to run?). Can you cat 
> or more a short text file, or does that cause a hang? What about df?
> 
> One thing you should check (this is true of any IDE drive, any size) is 
> that you have DMA enabled. If you use hdparm to query the drive 
> settings, it will report using_dma as on or off. If it is off, set it 
> (as root) with
> 
>         hdparm -d 1 /dev/hd*
> 
> replacing * with the right drive designator. If DMA is not enabled, the 
> sorts of operations you report cas causing the "lock ups" will be 
> painfully slow with the size drive you have, and annoying slow with any 
> modern drive (by which I mean 40 GB and up).
> 

You might also wnat to try swapping the IDE cable - or re-seating it.

> I don't run reiserfs here, but I've run drives ranging from 160 GB to 
> 250 GB for well over a year now, using ext2 and ext3, with no trouble at 
> all, in non-boot settings.
> 
> Finally, if you want technical help with kernel details, it helps to 
> mention what kernel you are using and what distro it is from (because 
> all distros I know of customize their kernels, at least a little bit).
> 
> 
> 
> 

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