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On Tue, Dec 22, 2020 at 7:58 AM Peter Humphrey <peter@××××××××××××.uk> wrote: |
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> |
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> Just a quickie - is there a way to enable a machine built on an MSDOS BIOS to |
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> recognise a partition on a 4TB external disk? I think I know the answer |
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> already, but just in case... |
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I suspect most newer firmwares are fine with it (even in legacy mode), |
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and ancient ones would need a firmware update, so good luck with that. |
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You might be able to mitigate the issue with a boot partition close to |
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the start of the disk. I'm honestly not sure if that works with |
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something like a USB hard drive. I'm not sure how old this system is |
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either. |
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Back in the day MBR patches for large disks were a pretty common |
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thing. I'm not sure how much any modern OS depends on the firmware to |
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do disk IO once it is booted, and I'm not sure that most bootloaders |
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even need help from the firmware beyond maybe whatever goes in the |
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boot sector. This is why some GRUB modes require a secondary |
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partition near the start of the disk to handle certain |
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filesystems/etc. (Or at least used to - GRUB and EFI have gotten so |
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good that I don't pay much attention to that stuff on newer hardware |
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and with common filesystems, even including ZFS.) |
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Rich |
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-- |
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Rich |
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