There is an "1024 cylinder" problem in which legacy BIOS will not access anything beyond the 1024th cylinder of a harddrive. This usually means below the first 8GB of a partition on a LBA BIOS configuration. If you can install your boot loader (LILO or GRUB) in the master boot record you should have no problems booting regardless of the drive size. Once the boot loader calls linux, the linux kernel accesses the hard drive directly without using the BIOS (hardware calls) and has no hardware reference limitations.
You may have installed Linux and it asked if you want to install GRUB or LILO to the MBR (master boot record) or to a partition.
Longer answer: if you have more than one OS, such as dual booting Linux and Windows XP you have to do some planning. You may have to create your bootable partition in the first 8GB of the drive. If you need more information I can find time later to discuss in email.
Just trying to help,
Norman
Doug wrote:
Cheryl,
I don't know the answer, but linux, with modern bootloaders, including LILO, are not limited to what the BIOS says for the maximum hard drive size. Linux only needs that BIOS info to boot. I have a machine that, when I attach a 20 GB hard drive, the BIOS shows it as 8 GB. But linux can access the whole drive. So your quest to find out how big of a hard drive you can use is probably a red herring. It does not matter what the BIOS can address. Linux will do direct communication with hardware after boot.
-- Doug
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