Arch Linux

Lonsas

Member

Registered: 2008-12-23

Posts: 22

[Solved]Can't access whole harddrive in arch

The situation: I decided to install arch instead of gentoo on my server because I needed faster maintenance, and I really like arch

The small weird things - the harddrive is an pretty old 60gb harddrive. Originally when the computer had windows installed it only found 30 of the 60gb. When I later installed gentoo I rejoiced that I could partition and use the whole disk - 60gb. And yeah it even worked when I reinstalled gentoo a couple of years later. But now when I'm trying to install arch... I'm just able to use 30gb again >.<

A little more info:
cfdisk can't handle the partitions at all...
fdisk can show the partitions and shows the current table with a total of 60gb, but when I try to create a new table I can only use 30gb again.
When I try to use the partitions I originally have (tot. 60gb) and create a new filesystem on the last partition, it doesn't use the whole parition and leaves 30gb.

I don't have a clue about what the problem is and  I would really like som help.

Edit: Found a little info, I think the bios only finds 30gb, and gentoo can access the whole harddrive in some way, don't know how...

Gentoo livecd has the boot option:
- hdx=stroke    allows you to partition the whole harddrive even when your BIOS
                can't handle large harddrives

Is there something like this in arch too?

toad: Like I said, even when I used my table which totaled 60gb I couldn't create a filesystem which used the last 30gb.

Last edited by Lonsas (2009-08-08 11:10:10)

toad

Member

From: if only I knew

Registered: 2008-12-22

Posts: 1,775

Website

Re: [Solved]Can't access whole harddrive in arch

No solution to your problem, but I usually revert to a gparted or partedmagic live CD when it comes to partitioning.

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never trust a toad...
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Lonsas

Member

Registered: 2008-12-23

Posts: 22

Re: [Solved]Can't access whole harddrive in arch

Doh, solved, I'm sorry that I bothered, I just used the "legacy ide, no sata" boot option...
Then to the next problem - how the heck do I make it work after the installation? I guess the scsi drivers get loaded since the drive is named sda.

Should I disable the scsi module at kernel line? And if -  is the module which needs disabling simply named scsi or is there something more/something else?

And finally - should I use the ide or the pata hook with mkinitcpio?

The solution to that is to add disablemodules=scsi_mod,libata,sd_mod to kernel line and using the ide hook for mkinitcpio
Don't know which of the modules that needs disabling but i chose those and now it works.

If anyone has a better solution please post... I could create my own custom kernel for this but it ain't worth the time right now.

Last edited by Lonsas (2009-08-08 11:09:57)