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Path: sserve!newshost.anu.edu.au!harbinger.cc.monash.edu.au!yarrina.connect.com.au!warrane.connect.com.au!kralizec.zeta.org.au!godzilla.zeta.org.au!not-for-mail From: bde@kralizec.zeta.org.au (Bruce Evans) Newsgroups: comp.os.386bsd.questions Subject: Re: New disklabel not working? 256 heads????? Date: 26 Sep 1994 00:48:24 +1000 Organization: Kralizec Dialup Unix Sydney - +61-2-837-1183, v.32bis v.42bis Lines: 23 Message-ID: <3642joINNb62@godzilla.zeta.org.au> References: <GILBERT.94Sep19150356@hydra1c.cs.utk.edu> <35mbg2$ro1@news.uni-c.dk> <GILBERT.94Sep21130329@hydra3a.cs.utk.edu> <35v6kr$9cs@uc.msc.edu> NNTP-Posting-Host: godzilla.zeta.org.au In article <35v6kr$9cs@uc.msc.edu>, John Boggs <jboggs@seq.hamline.edu> wrote: >Yeah, but is this warning (can't handle 256 heads from partition >table) DANGEROUS? If I just leave it, will my disk one day end up >trashed? I've been ignoring it, since it resets to 16 heads, which is >what my only drive has. ... It depends. If the warning is for the usual error in the partition table, then the error is harmless. (disklabel creates a bogus partition table if DOS partitions are not used.) If the warning is for an impossible number of heads in the disk label, then resetting to 16 heads will mess up the label. Modern BIOS's support large IDE drives by pretending that they have more virtual heads than are physically possible, e.g., 32 virtual; the physical max is 16. If you copy the virtual number from the BIOS setup display to the disk label, then you may get a physically impossible number. The wd driver requires the physical number to work. One version of it refused to look at drives with a non-physical number in either the partition table or the label. The bug in the dummy partition table was discovered not long before FreeBSD-1.1.5 was released, and the wd driver was changed to sort of work around it. -- Bruce Evans bde@kralizec.zeta.org.au