Subject: Re: what to use for hdd mode, LBA or NORMAL?
To: Henry Nelson <henry@irm.nara.kindai.ac.jp>
From: Manuel Bouyer <bouyer@antioche.lip6.fr>
List: port-i386
Date: 02/07/2000 17:10:07
On Mon, Feb 07, 2000 at 12:46:11PM +0900, Henry Nelson wrote:
> The startup messages and the installation menu prompts have me
> thoroughly confused. In the BIOS CMOS setup I am in the habit of
> setting C/H/S manually, so the type is "User" and the mode is "NORMAL."
> The message during the boot process reflects this, and for example
> says: "1160MB 2358cyl 16heads 63sec 2376864sectors," which is correct
> for the example drive IBM-DPRA-21215. However, the installation prompt
> says "This disk matches the following BIOS disk"
> BIOS# cylinders heads sectors
> 0 1023 16 63
> which appears to me to be a LBA translation, of sorts. I went ahead and
> chose to "b: set the geometry by hand \ cylinders [2358] \ heads [16] \
> sectors [63]." So far, so good; things seem to be working without problem.
Old bioses were limited to 1023/16/63, so it's why in normal mode the
cylinder numbers are limited (the installation just tells you what the bios
reported).
Usually I leave the bios to 'autodetect' and accept what the install process
proposes.
--
Manuel Bouyer, LIP6, Universite Paris VI. Manuel.Bouyer@lip6.fr
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