[Leaplist] FAQ - 500gb IDE drive in P2/400 system?

[Kyle Gonzales]

Linux is rarely the problem, its usually the hardware. :)  And PIII is
modern compared to PI/II hardware, as even some old PIII boards had
Ultra100 controllers.  There were issues with some Ultra33 & Ultra66
controllers causing data corruption when trying to deal with Ultra100
& 133 drives.  I had this problem with the (in)famous Abit BP6 mobo
and its Ultra66 controllers.  I just purchased the above mentioned
Promise controller, and put all my drives on it.  I got a little bonus
in the process, with the CPU load related to I/O dropping by using the
Promise controller instead of the onboard IDE controllers.  I would
swear I saw better throughput as well from the Ultra 33 & 66 drives I
hooked to the controller.  Of course, that was 5 years and 4 computers
ago, so it could be all lore by now. ;)

On Nov 26, 2007 12:22 AM, Randall Perry <randallp at hcrn.info> wrote:
> On 11/25/07, Damien McKenna <damien at mc-kenna.com> wrote:
> > I figured that, I was concerned about the 137gb limit as I'd heard of
> > some odd things happening occasionally.
> >
> Linux does not read any settings from CMOS stored BIOS settings for IDE drives.
> It does not matter if your system 'supports it' or not.
> I have thrown 400 gig drives in older PIII 500 server with no issues.
> (understand that the size limit of 400 gig is that you also need LBA48
> support in the distribution that you are using).
> Also, don't think that you are going to get the performance of ATA/133
> out of an IDE interface that is only MODE4 or at best..ATA33 (don't
> call it the 'controller' on the mobo..the controller has been attached
> to the hard drive since IDE came out.  If you are talking MFM or SCSI,
> then that would be accurate.).
> I had a howto somewhere on
> http://www.domain-logic.com
> but it I will have to grep for where I stored it (also updated that
> Linux server and am still filing things away).
>
> Another note: the extra ground wires in the Ultra ata drive cable you
> might have can cause signal noise issues on your system.  Remember
> that it is a parallel interface and inherents the flaws of such a
> system.  Bryan Smith has the down-and-dirty about it.
> I just get remember off the top of my head now...gotta finish a pile
> of video editing for a client tomorrow.
>
> *:-.,_,.-:*'``'*:-.,_,.-:*'``'*:-.,_,.-:*'``'*:-.,_,.-:*'``'*:-.
>     Randall Perry
>     Hope Crisis Response Network
>  www.hcrn.info
>
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-- 
Kyle Gonzales
kyle.gonzales at gmail.com
GPG Pub Key: 9C3FBD51

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