SUMMARY: Using a large disks in Sol 8

Many thanks to

  Tim Chipman
  George Goffe
  Bruce Newcomer
  Peter Stokes

Original Question : Using a large disks in Sol 8 
> I recently purchased a 250 gig WD hard drive for a blade 100....cannot see
more that 500 meg of the hard 

As a result of the emails below, I will 
  a) chage the hard drive to a 130 gig, 
  b) search the additional web sites listed! (I have restricted to the
sunmanagers and google.

Cheers

Paul

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Interesting Blade 100 Web sites:

http://040.sytes.net/texts/Unofficial_Sun_Blade_100_FAQ.htm 
http://www.freelists.org/cgi-bin/list?list_id=suncommunity. 
http://www.gekkou.co.uk/forum/list.php?f=1


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The IDE controller appears to be able to see 137 GB (not 132 GB) and it is
limited to the fact it does not see the  newer addressing modes for the
newer drives. One post in the sunmanagers archive from June 2002 mentioned
LBA48 addressing. On the sun website I found the following about the U5/10
and I believe the controller is the same as the later vintage U10s:

" You can use up to 137 GB in an U5/10, assuming you find a drive that works
with the controller in the U5/10. The controller is rather picky about what
drives it likes. You need to use the latest OBP (3.31), but even then you
won't be able to see more than 137GB due to the controller not supporting
the new addressing modes. "


( http://supportforum.sun.com/cgi-bin/WebX.cgi?13@198.gAcZabWjlmF^0@.eeb85f1
)

    Also there is a Sun Blade 100/150 community forum at
http://www.freelists.org/cgi-bin/list?list_id=suncommunity. The forum is
hosted at http://www.gekkou.co.uk/forum/list.php?f=1

    For me, I am using the WD 120JD in my Blade 100 and it is superb. Fast,
silent and troublefree.


--------------------------------------

the blade100 FAQ website (among other sources) indicates that the IDE 
controller hardware that Sun chose to use in systems like blade 100 
maxes out capacity @ ~130 gigs, ie, the "old school" max cap for IDE 
gear.  This is a hardware limitation and cannot be bypassed. The only 
workaround I can imagine would be to buy a 3rd party IDE controller card 
that has support for >130gig HDDs, but I'm not positive such things 
exist that work in sparc hardware gear.

--------------------------------------


The limit is in the version of ATA supported with the Blade 100 and Ultra 
5/10. From previous posts it appears the version only supports this size of 
disk natively. I have heard of other people who tweak the drive config and 
have got 150Gb, but never tried it myself. I have run 120Gb drives very 
successfully, but never bothered with larger ones for this reason as it 
always appears to give problems.

--------------------------------------

I had the same problem with a maxtor 160gb drive and 
contacted sun hardware support. They said that they 
didn't support devices > 20gb... I told them that I 
had 2 40gb drives and a 60gb drive that was working 
but got no response... The system only saw 500mb like 
yours... Argh!!! Maybe a firmware upgrade would help? 
probeide shows the device at the right size tho. Also, 
I found out that on u10 hardware, dad3 can not boot > 
40gb drives! You might have something equally screwy 
on your system and probably all systems like yours... 
Argh... 
 
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