Topic: Upgrading my BIOS

Ok, here's the full story:

I recently got a new 200GB HD for my Debian Linux server. The previous HD was only like 4GB. Since this server needs to be used for storing website backups, it needed more space. So, anyway, I installed the base system of Debian 4.0r1. When I tried to boot into the new system, I got a error 18 from GRUB. After much research I found out that the cause of this is that my BIOS is rather old and can't recognize my HD larger than 136GB. So, now I need to get my BIOS updated, but I have one problem. The server doesn't have a floppy drive, just a CD-ROM drive.

So is it possible to upgrade my BIOS via CD? Or should I put my computer to sleep, take it's floppy drive, put it in the server, upgrade the BIOS, put the floppy drive back in my computer before it even know it was gone?

I guess another solution would be to partition the HD to a smaller partition (=< 136GB), but I'd like to see and use *all* of my HD. I don't even know as a fact if that would work, but I'm just assuming it will.

depends .

I'd first try to burn the floppy image as a bootable cd, and try to upgrade from there.

quote:

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zavaboy said:

So is it possible to upgrade my BIOS via CD?

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I have never seen BIOS be able to load via CD but for your system it may be different. I would slap in a floppy and go that way.

I am pretty sure you are right that you can partition it into 100gb and install it that way. I did have a problem once on an old machine that it wouldn't recognize the drive that was ~200gb too. I partitioned it installed however I actually lost 100gb!! The system couldn't see the other section even though it formated. I didn't spend a lot of time on it before I just upgraded the BIOS

My Dell computer that I have, has to load the hard drive for windows through a RAID connection (SATA drives). This can only be done using a floppy....I don't have a floppy on the computer. So when I crashed my hard drive and I went to put Windows back on it, I was in a similar situation.

I would really just slap a floppy in it, upgrade the BIOS and be done with it. Usually doesn't take that long to flash the BIOS anyway. It's going to take more time to put a floppy drive in the computer

Later,

C:\

I think the reason so many BIOS upgrade instructions say to use a floppy disk is because the data is of such small size. I don't see any particular reason why it'd matter if you used a CD instead, or a USB drive, for that matter.

yeah, as long as it looks 'close enough to a floppy' to the basic dos that most bios updaters
run from (or used to run from, last time I did this), you're fine.
Hence my suggestion to do an 'el torito' bootable cd from a floppy image.
The bios reads the image and emulates a floppy, and it should work pretty much
like you were booting from a real floppy.
Cost: 1 cd..., 2 minutes with a decent cd burning program

I have managed BIOS updates from USB flash drives in the past, but never tried with CD. In some cases, the flashing utility requires writable media - though you could always get all fancy with ram disks and such...

I burned a CD-R and tried that, but no luck. (maybe I was doing it wrong)

Anyway, I went ahead and swapped the floppy drive from my computer, got the BIOS updated, but the BIOS handled my HD no differently then before.

So, now I'm going with my plan B: Partitioning 100GB rather than the whole disk.

Maybe later I might be able to get a new motherboard that will have a BIOS that supports large HDs.

Small correction: My new HD is 250GB, not 200GB.

the back of my head says: as long as your boot partition is below 8 gigabyte,
you shouldn't run into any trouble...

How you partitioning in the first place?
One big partition is usually the wrong way to go with linux*,
and once the kernel is loaded, the bios won't matter anymore.


*Especially since linux is essentially dead once your root partition is full - so /var and /home
belong on a different partition, in order to prevent this from happening.

I'm giving 100GB to the root... I don't know the best way to partition Linux.

Below 8 gigs and the first partition, isn't it?

You see, I didn't know that, though I do now. I talked over partitioning with TP via ICQ. I'm using what the Debian install partitioner has for the "Separate /home, /usr, /var, and /tmp partitions" option. It looks like this:

#1 primary 279.6 MB ext3 /     (bootable)
#5 logical   5.0 GB ext3 /usr
#6 logical   3.0 GB ext3 /var
#7 logical   1.2 GB swap swap
#8 logical 403.0 MB ext3 /tmp
#9 logical 240.2 GB ext3 /home

Debian booted into it's new base system just fine.



(Edited by zavaboy on 10-16-2007 02:55)