250GB hd: Can FreeBSD use >137GB (bios) as Linux or Windows do?

[Bob Johnson]

On 7/31/08, me at janh.de <me at janh.de> wrote:
> Yesterday, I wrote about "CANNOT READ BLK" from my new hd that I
> filled via firewire:
> http://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-questions/2008-July/179646.html
> The response suggested to check for faulty hardware, which I am still
> trying to do.
>
> I found FreeBSD reporting the drive to have 128GB instead of 232GB as
> FreeBSD did when the drive was connected via firewire. Searching the
> web, I found one reference of someone else having problems with
>>128/137GB using the same (latest) bios on this five year old
> (Centrino) laptop (Acer TM800).

FreeBSD has no such limit, at least not in recent versions (I'm using
a 200 GB drive at this moment, and at home I have a system with a 500
GB and a 750 GB drive). Your problem is caused either by the BIOS
lying to it (which is unlikely, because FreeBSD uses the BIOS value
only for initial booting), or the hard drive itself lying. Does your
drive have a jumper that causes it to report its capacity as 128GB for
compatibility with older BIOSes? If so, remove the jumper and try
again.

-- Bob Johnson
   fbsdlists at gmail.com