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vico
Starting Member
10 Posts |
 Posted - 01/05/2010 : 23:36:16
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Hello,
My original HDD Toshiba MK8007GAH 80GB became corrupted and I decided to experiment with an upgrade; my P1610 worked well many years under Gentoo Linux. Just bought a Toshiba MK2431GAH 240GB HDD and installed using the P1620 ZIF HDD cable. During booting, just after the system memory check (2048K), I get the message on the screen
Fixed Disk 0: TOSHIBA MK2431GAH
Mouse initialized
ERROR
0200: Failure Fixed Disk 0
Press <F1> to resume, <F2> to Setup
Going into the BIOS setup, I see under the Main menu
Drive0 [TOSHIBA MK2431GAH]
Drilling down into the [] above, I get
Type [Auto]
LBA Format
Total Sectors: 468862128
Maximum Capacity: 240GB
Multi-Sector Transfers: [16 Sectors]
LBA Mode Control: [Enabled]
Transfer Mode: [Multiword DMA2]
Ultra DMA Mode: [Mode 5]
So the question is: if I install a Linux OS on this drive, would I ever be able to boot from it? I've got screen shots but need to find a url to upload and link to this message. Will do it if needed for feedback.
Thanks for any inputs.
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Kilrah
Junior Member
Switzerland
277 Posts |
Posted - 01/06/2010 : 04:15:19
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Pretty weird it notifies a "failure" but seems to detect the drive correctly... never heard of that.
Just try and install some OS on it and you'll see quicker and with more certainty if it really works or not than if you await an answer here ;)
P1620 - 2GB, 120GB/5400rpm HD, 32GB Transcend 133x CF + Delkin UDMA, hacked internal 3G, W7RC |
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vico
Starting Member
10 Posts |
Posted - 01/06/2010 : 10:51:59
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Indeed. I am proceeding with the Gentoo OS build. For starters I cleared the partition table and boot sectors with dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sda count=1024. Just out of curiosity I rebooted and the message obtained just after the BIOS initialized was unchanged (disk is identified correctly but failure message follows). However when going into the BIOS the Driver0 line read
Driver0 [none]
That is also weird.
Anyway I am going forward...this takes a while so hopefully tomorrow I will post the results.
Thanks.
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tmt
Advanced Member
2758 Posts |
Posted - 01/06/2010 : 11:14:47
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I think you should doublecheck that the cable is installed correctly. If it's not
seated perfectly square in the connector, especially on the motherboard side, this
kind of thing can occur.
Tom. |
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vico
Starting Member
10 Posts |
Posted - 01/06/2010 : 13:20:43
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Re-seated both ends of the ZIF cable carefully. The ZIF latch on the driver side is delicate and I don't like to mess with it. After rebooting, the BIOS menu recognizes the driver. That is, the original line as in my first e-mail
Driver0 [TOSHIBA MK2431GAH]
and other info as above showed up. Hmm odd. Anyway going forward. Thanks for the reminder. |
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vico
Starting Member
10 Posts |
Posted - 01/06/2010 : 20:15:28
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Okay built a gentoo linux OS on the HDD and rebooted. Again the screen shows as above
Fixed Disk 0: TOSHIBA MK2431GAH
Mouse initialized
ERROR
0200: Failure Fixed Disk 0
Press <F1> to resume, <F2> to Setup
There is a beep and it pauses there. I hit <F1> and get
Operating System not found
The boot priority in the BIOS shows:
Boot priority order:
1: USB MEMORY: None
2: CD/DVD Drive
3: Drive0: TOSHIBA MK2431GAH
Wondering if there is still something bad about the connection of the HDD to the MB.
The discussion here http://www.wimsbios.com/forum/topic11128.html does not help much. However there is quite a lot on the web about the dreaded error 0200 on laptops pointing to hardware connectivity problems. Will check.
Any inputs appreciated. Thanks. |
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docholliday
Starting Member
2 Posts |
Posted - 01/07/2010 : 10:22:00
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There are quite a few BIOSes that only have enough address space allocated for drives up to "x" size. The BIOS response is a query to the disk, and only shows what the drive tells it. Whether it can actually "see" (er, interact with) the physical disk is another story. That is why many older drives have a jumper called "cap limit". It limited the capacity of the drive to a certain size so that the BIOS could see it. In the old 2.1GB limitation days, Western Death had a app called "EZ-Drive" (a "drive overlay" utility) that would allows the BIOS to map into the larger disk successfully. If this is the case, I wonder if you could hack one of the old utilities into the disk to translate the BIOS. (This is the 48-bit LBA BIOS limit)
Also, there is a also a limitation that prevents most operating systems from having the boot disk greater than a certain size. If you can get the system to see the disk (from something like the XP installer) you could try making a partition of 32gb, then do a quick install. If it works, then the case would be this limitation. (This would be the 137GB BOOT partition limit)
Not saying that you can't have a partition greater than "x", but it only applies to the BOOT partition. The typical symptom is getting a response of "Operating System not found" or "Boot sector not found".
There is also a problem that may come from the bios not being able to ready 4096 sector disks...the spec sheet for this drive shows it as a 4096 sector...but the bios may not support that. In which case you are screwed unless you can get a drive overlay to translate this out...
Finally, you *may* have a bad disk...just because it is detected, doesn't mean that the disk is good. Again, the BIOS only reads what is queried from the firmware on the disk. The actual process of interacting with the disk is different...you can Spinrite the disk and see if the first sector is bad or if it even reads correctly once out of the BIOS. Spinrite is the only program that actually tests a disk. The other apps only read what the drive firmware is reporting...
Toshiba doesn't make utilities for the world to test/configure their drives, but the Hitachi/IBM tools usually work...
http://www.hitachigst.com/hdd/support/download.htm
The feature tools will sometimes ready Toshiba disks and let you change settings (like "cap limit", for testing purposes). Otherwise, Maxtor/Seagate stuff will sometimes work too. Since Toshiba makes some Fujitsu drives, these tools may also be of use... |
Edited by - docholliday on 01/07/2010 10:42:58 |
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tmt
Advanced Member
2758 Posts |
Posted - 01/07/2010 : 11:54:52
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It's not a BIOS capacity limit issue. The BIOS is in LBA mode and when it does see the
drive, it reports correctly.
This is almost definitely a hardware problem. Vico, when you say your old drive started
to have issues, were they similar to these? I hate to point the finger at your motherboard
but it seems possible. Also, how exactly did you manage to install Gentoo on the drive?
Does it work in another machine?
Tom. |
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vico
Starting Member
10 Posts |
Posted - 01/07/2010 : 16:36:40
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Thanks for the info docholliday. Will digest it later. However I think this drive is fine since I was able to mount it, partition it, write to it, and check the file systems created on it; see below.
Tom, the hardware problem was not similar. It started with some problems with accessing files in a particular directory under linux; cd'ing into a directory would take a long time. I ran reiserfsck on the whole drive and it showed a bad block on the particular partition where the directory was located. The reiserfsck tool also suggested to get a new drive as opposed to try to fix the bad block; more practical. I copied all the contents from the drive into safe storage and tried to fix the bad block but this did not go well so I ordered the new drive.
To install Gentoo on the new drive, I booted the laptop from a USBlive stick with systemrescuecd installed on it (I can also use the minimal Gentoo install on a USB stick; both work). This gives me a Linux Gentoo environment with sufficient tools to install a new OS on a new disk. Then I mounted the MK2431GAH drive, which fdisk identified correctly for capacity, sectors, etc. Used dd to clear the boot and partition table sector on the drive. Put a reiserfs file system on the partitions (actually not all of them but this is a detail) and followed the creation of the Gentoo Linux OS install (www.gentoo.org); it is lengthy but I am a long-time user of gentoo and have built many systems; had several laptops with gentoo in the past. My P1610 worked several years under gentoo very efficiently.
I will try to boot the laptop from the new drive when connected externally on a USB port. I have ordered an adapter from LIF to 3.5" IDE where I can hook up to my existing adapter from 3.5" IDE to USB. Will post the results.
Thanks for the replies. |
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Kilrah
Junior Member
Switzerland
277 Posts |
Posted - 01/07/2010 : 17:19:46
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Reading other posts mentioning trouble with the same drive, I would definitely place my bet on BIOS incompatibility issue, due to either capacity or 4096 sector size.
P1620 - 2GB, 120GB/5400rpm HD, 32GB Transcend 133x CF + Delkin UDMA, hacked internal 3G, W7RC |
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docholliday
Starting Member
2 Posts |
Posted - 01/07/2010 : 18:42:45
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quote:
Originally posted by tmt
It's not a BIOS capacity limit issue. The BIOS is in LBA mode and when it does see the
drive, it reports correctly.
This is almost definitely a hardware problem. Vico, when you say your old drive started
to have issues, were they similar to these? I hate to point the finger at your motherboard
but it seems possible. Also, how exactly did you manage to install Gentoo on the drive?
Does it work in another machine?
Tom.
Tom, just because the BIOS sees the drive doesn't mean that it can access it. The bios seeing the drive and placing it in LBA mode only means that the firmware is reporting the drive to be a certain spec. It doesn't mean that the drive/bios combination is actually usable.
Try Spinrite on the disk and see what it says in the raw error count and seek/write error sections. That'll tell you if the disk is bad or not. |
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tmt
Advanced Member
2758 Posts |
Posted - 01/07/2010 : 20:18:09
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quote:
Originally posted by Kilrah
or 4096 sector size.
It's a new 4096-byte sector drive? That's definitely going to be a possibility.
Tom. |
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vico
Starting Member
10 Posts |
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tmt
Advanced Member
2758 Posts |
Posted - 01/07/2010 : 22:59:27
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Yeah, that's a codeword in this context. The new 4096-byte sectors have issues with
older OS's and RAID controllers, but it turns out they work fine with most any Linux.
So they're being marketed rather narrowly, for now.
I bet it would work fine if it was a secondary drive and therefore only accessed by the
OS, but as a boot drive I think it's possible the BIOS is reading every 8th 512b sector,
or something. In addition to being mightily confused by the layout.
These larger-sector drives are going to lead to a new level of storage capacity, btw.
The overhead of error correction has really come to be a bottleneck for 512-byte chunks.
Should give conventional hard drives an extension against the SSD takeover. Too bad many
older machines may not be able to take advantage.
Western Digital has a fairly straightforward technology overview here:
http://www.wdc.com/wdproducts/library/whitepapers/en/2579-771430.pdf
They have a tool called "WDalign" which improves performance (much like "aligning" SSDs),
it can correct some driver issues. There's a jumper on their drives too. Not sure if either
one works on non-WD drives, but you can check it out at:
http://www.wdc.com/en/products/advancedformat/
Let us know what you find...
Tom. |
Edited by - tmt on 01/07/2010 23:09:25 |
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vico
Starting Member
10 Posts |
Posted - 01/21/2010 : 14:16:24
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Sorry for the delayed response. Got a LIF to USB adapter, plugged the drive in, and booted just fine. The Linux kernel needs a delay during boot to detect the external HDD; this was the only fix needed (an option during boot to delay 10 seconds).
Therefore, unless some type of BIOS upgrade takes place a 4096-byte-sector HDD will not work as the primary drive in the P1610. I ordered a USB enclosure and will use the drive as an external secondary drive. Just placed an order for a HS122JC - SAMSUNG which should work as the internal drive.
Thanks for the inputs. |
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vico
Starting Member
10 Posts |
Posted - 02/01/2010 : 23:49:07
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| Just to close this thread. I installed the HS122JC SAMSUNG (just a bit noise) and put gentoo linux on it. It was amazing to see how fast the OpenOffice suite was compiled; at least 2 times faster than with the old toshiba HDD (this still takes about 15 hours). |
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vico
Starting Member
10 Posts |
Posted - 02/09/2010 : 18:14:16
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| Ah. One more thing. If you do manage to boot from a 4kB-sector drive, watch out when partitioning the drive since efficiency can be reduced. I am currently using the Toshiba HDD as an external USB drive with one single partition for backups. Using fdisk, the partition stated on sector 63 which slows down the drive by as much as a factor of 8. If the partition is made to start at the 64th sector the performance is much improved; at least under Linux. See the thread [url]http://www.mail-archive.com/gentoo-user@lists.gentoo.org/msg97665.html[\url] |
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tmt
Advanced Member
2758 Posts |
Posted - 02/09/2010 : 23:17:29
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Definitely. The WDalign utility I mentioned above does the same alignment. To be clear
though, the HS122JC doesn't have this issue, having conventional 512byte sectors.
Tom. |
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Kilrah
Junior Member
Switzerland
277 Posts |
Posted - 04/03/2010 : 10:58:56
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Found some interesting read on the matter, might interest you even if you "sorted" or rather circumvented the issue...
http://lwn.net/Articles/377895/
Exerpts:
quote:
[...]These complications result from the fact that the rest of the world is not prepared to deal with anything other than 512-byte sectors, starting with the BIOS found on almost all systems. In fact, a BIOS which can boot from a 4K-sector drive is an exceedingly rare item - if, indeed, it exists at all. Fixing the BIOS is evidently harder than one might think, and, evidently, there is little motivation to do so. [...]
The problem does not just exist at the BIOS level: bootloaders (whether they are Linux-oriented or not) are not set up to handle larger sectors; neither are partitioning tools, not to mention a wide variety of other operating systems. Something must be done to enable 4K-sector drives to work with all of this software. [...]
Part of the hesitation to work on booting off of 4 KB lbs drives is motivated by a general trend in the industry to move boot functionality to SSD. There are 4 KB LBS SSDs out there but in general the industry is sticking to ATA for local boot.
P1620 - 2GB, 120GB/5400rpm HD, 32GB Transcend 133x CF + Delkin UDMA, hacked internal 3G, W7RC |
Edited by - Kilrah on 04/03/2010 11:11:34 |
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Topic |
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P1610 and 240GB HDD Toshiba upgrade
