Re: bogus IDE disk geometry, what to do?

Giuliano P Procida (myxie@debian.org)
Tue, 25 May 1999 14:15:55 +0100

On Mon, May 24, 1999 at 11:12:21PM +0200, Guest section DW wrote:
> For Linux-only disks, "normal" is best. Then no translations
> are done, and the largest number of kernels handles the thing.
> (And moreover, no tiny fraction is lost by rounding.)

Well, this old Dell BIOS [1] only supports "None", "Auto" or "User".
The Auto does not go so far as to allow me to specify LBA.

> Yes, that is probably what you would have gotten from "normal".
> This is best for Linux-only.
> If you also have DOS or so, then 1024/255/63 is probably best.

I take it then that DOS/Windows will typically lose the end of the
disk due to translational rounding errors.

Giuliano.

[1] Depressing fact: Dell BIOS help line: "press ALT-P for next page",
yeah right. ALT-N is for next page, ALT-P is for previous page. Both
keys work, but, with only 2 pages there is no difference.

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