HD Geometry Issue...

[W. Sierke]

From: "Christopher Turner" <christopher at contemplation.org>
> I have two 40Gig Seagate Baracuda IV's.
>
> The physical drive is 1023/256/63
> The BIOS detects it at 1024/255/63

Are these ST340016A? The Seagate site:

<http://www.seagate.com/cda/products/discsales/personal/family/0,1085,384,00
.html>

lists the logical geometry as 16383/16/63 (8G). I've recently used this (as
the BIOS setting) for an 80G Seagate (ST380024A). FreeBSD sees the drive as
9729/255/63. I even had to drop the BIOS setting down to 16383/15/63 to
circumvent a bug in the BIOS whereby it wouldn't boot from the drive (with
the 16 heads setting) - FreeBSD happily ignored this setting change.

Have you enabled LBA in your BIOS? Not sure what else to suggest other than
to try Seagate's geometry if your BIOS will accept it. The AMI BIOS on the
system the 80G drive is fitted to has LBA, Block mode and 32-bit mode
enabled and auto-detects the drive as 16383/16/63.

Note that those geometries that you listed (as I've included at the start of
this message) are BIOS settings only, and don't represent any physical
geometry of the drive (those settings only equate to approx. 8G for
starters).


Wayne