750GB limit? Why?
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From: larry moe 'n curly on 12 Apr 2010 06:33 Why do some older hard drive controller BIOSes have problems with drives larger than about 750GB or 1TB? IOW why are there limits at 750GB and 1TB, as there are at 8.4GB and 137GB? Some affected controllers use the VIA 6420, 6421, and 8237x SATA chips or Silicon Image 680 PATA chip. Silicon Image released a BIOS update to take care of a 1TB limit on RAIDs.
From: Arno on 12 Apr 2010 14:19 larry moe 'n curly <larrymoencurly(a)my-deja.com> wrote: > Why do some older hard drive controller BIOSes have problems with > drives larger than about 750GB or 1TB? IOW why are there limits at > 750GB and 1TB, as there are at 8.4GB and 137GB? > Some affected controllers use the VIA 6420, 6421, and 8237x SATA chips > or Silicon Image 680 PATA chip. Silicon Image released a BIOS update > to take care of a 1TB limit on RAIDs. There should not be a limit in that range. The next one is 32 bit (SCSI) sector numbers with 512 byte sectors, i.e. 2TiB. I am not disputing your statement, I just do not see a good explanation. Maybe planned obsolence? Arno -- Arno Wagner, Dr. sc. techn., Dipl. Inform., CISSP -- Email: arno(a)wagner.name GnuPG: ID: 1E25338F FP: 0C30 5782 9D93 F785 E79C 0296 797F 6B50 1E25 338F ---- Cuddly UI's are the manifestation of wishful thinking. -- Dylan Evans
From: zappo on 12 Apr 2010 15:02 Arno wrote: > larry moe 'n curly <larrymoencurly(a)my-deja.com> wrote: >> Why do some older hard drive controller BIOSes have problems with >> drives larger than about 750GB or 1TB? IOW why are there limits at >> 750GB and 1TB, as there are at 8.4GB and 137GB? > >> Some affected controllers use the VIA 6420, 6421, and 8237x SATA >> chips or Silicon Image 680 PATA chip. Silicon Image released a BIOS >> update to take care of a 1TB limit on RAIDs. > There should not be a limit in that range. There is anyway. > The next one is 32 bit (SCSI) sector numbers with 512 byte > sectors, i.e. 2TiB. I am not disputing your statement, I just > do not see a good explanation. Maybe planned obsolence? Mindless conspiracy theory. Its MUCH more likely that someone fucked up.
From: Mark F on 15 Apr 2010 13:19 On Tue, 13 Apr 2010 05:02:46 +1000, "zappo" <zappo(a)wtrf.com> wrote: > Arno wrote: > > larry moe 'n curly <larrymoencurly(a)my-deja.com> wrote: > >> Why do some older hard drive controller BIOSes have problems with > >> drives larger than about 750GB or 1TB? IOW why are there limits at > >> 750GB and 1TB, as there are at 8.4GB and 137GB? > > > >> Some affected controllers use the VIA 6420, 6421, and 8237x SATA > >> chips or Silicon Image 680 PATA chip. Silicon Image released a BIOS > >> update to take care of a 1TB limit on RAIDs. > > > There should not be a limit in that range. > > There is anyway. Likely to be a firmware sanity check limitation. I have an Addonics ADSA4R-E adaptor on my Windows XP system. I shows up in Device Manager as a Silicon Image SiI 3114 SATARaid Controller. Before I updated the firmware it hung will finding drives at BIOS time if there was a with 750 gB drive attached. No problem with 500 gB drives or if the 750 gB drive was powered up after the BIOS time stuff. (I don't think powering a drive on a running Windows XP system is officially supported for this adapter, but it seems to work.) I updated the firmware and now I have no problems with 2000 gB connected. (I don't boot from the adaptor so I don't know if it can actually boot from the large disks.) Addonics told me that it simply was a matter of removing a software sanity check in the adapter BIOS routines that only run at startup, but I couldn't confirm this with Silicon Image, which was the company that actually supplied the firmware update. > > > The next one is 32 bit (SCSI) sector numbers with 512 byte > > sectors, i.e. 2TiB. I am not disputing your statement, I just > > do not see a good explanation. Maybe planned obsolence? As noted above, for the adapter that I have the limitation to less than 750 gB is reported to have been due a sanity check rather than a program error (such as getting a 32 bit unsigned number as a result and treating it as a 31 bit number.) > > Mindless conspiracy theory. Its MUCH more likely that someone fucked up. >
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