From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Received: from pigeon.gentoo.org ([208.92.234.80] helo=lists.gentoo.org) by finch.gentoo.org with esmtp (Exim 4.60) (envelope-from ) id 1SgVII-00068P-10 for garchives@archives.gentoo.org; Mon, 18 Jun 2012 06:18:34 +0000 Received: from pigeon.gentoo.org (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by pigeon.gentoo.org (Postfix) with SMTP id 0BA96E0595; Mon, 18 Jun 2012 06:18:06 +0000 (UTC) Received: from crowfix.com (li35-165.members.linode.com [72.14.176.165]) by pigeon.gentoo.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 62AA3E011A for ; Mon, 18 Jun 2012 06:16:38 +0000 (UTC) Received: (qmail 15473 invoked from network); 18 Jun 2012 06:17:59 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO df.crowfix.com) (10.130.13.2) by 10.130.13.1 with SMTP; 18 Jun 2012 06:17:59 -0000 Received: (qmail 18490 invoked by uid 1000); 18 Jun 2012 06:16:24 -0000 Date: Sun, 17 Jun 2012 23:16:24 -0700 From: felix@crowfix.com To: gentoo-user@lists.gentoo.org Subject: [gentoo-user] Getting around ancient SATA disk size limitations Message-ID: <20120618061624.GJ4722@crowfix.com> Precedence: bulk List-Post: List-Help: List-Unsubscribe: List-Subscribe: List-Id: Gentoo Linux mail X-BeenThere: gentoo-user@lists.gentoo.org Reply-to: gentoo-user@lists.gentoo.org MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline User-Agent: Mutt/1.5.21 (2010-09-15) X-Archives-Salt: 212a6e3a-c3a3-42eb-8eef-15e74d5eaf11 X-Archives-Hash: 19349ea620bd694c3e39a8bafe121c4e I have an ancient system which was quite the bee's knees in its day 8 years ago, but is showing its age. I plugged two 4TB SATA drives in and the BIOS hangs trying to display the disk size. Whether it is the size itself, or from using 4K blocks, I do not know. I bought a USB 3.0 disk enclosure and the system refused to even acknowledge its presence. USB 3.0 may be advertised as backwards compatible, but not on my system. I put one of the drives into an old USB 2.0 enclosure, and while it was found and useable, it saw the size as 1.6TB. I can't get a USB 3.0 PCI card; there are PCI-e cards, but my system is PCI and PCI-X. I did get a SATA II PCI card (SATA III requires PCI-e), but won't get a chance to plug it in for a few days. I'm hoping it will let me use the 4T drives. Does anyone know of any verified cheap tricks to make this old system recognize the 4TB drives properly? I'm not interested in any NAS or other expensive solutions; I'd just as soon buy a cheap modern system and lots of USB 3.0 disk enclosures. But I'd rather not go that route yet. -- ... _._. ._ ._. . _._. ._. ___ .__ ._. . .__. ._ .. ._. Felix Finch: scarecrow repairman & rocket surgeon / felix@crowfix.com GPG = E987 4493 C860 246C 3B1E 6477 7838 76E9 182E 8151 ITAR license #4933 I've found a solution to Fermat's Last Theorem but I see I've run out of room o