Tried different hard drives with E-SATA, only 500 GB works! Not 2Tb, nor 1.5 Tb

[gknippels]

Hi,

I just bought a black esata multiboot plug. I succeeded in making it boot from a 500 Gb Seagate harddisk (ST3500312CS) with some effort but was not successful at getting it to boot from a 1.5 TB Seagate (ST31500341AS) or 2.0 TB Western Digital drive (WD20EADS-00S2B0). Most likely this disk size is not support by the plug.
The installer program for turning the plug in to a 'boot from esata drive' device seemed to partition the large drives properly, but when it came to the final U-boot sequence the boot program reported negative sizes for the various partitions and subsequently failed to boot.

Is there any way to make the esata multiboot plug work with these large drives? Do I need to make a kernel modification? Is ext4 required?

Any suggestions are welcome.

Guido

[NewIT_Marcus]

The largest drive I have used is 1T (albeit not for booting), and it worked straightaway.

[mola]

The largest drive I have used is 1T (albeit not for booting), and it worked straightaway.

I'm using a Raid5 enclosure that behaves like a 3TB eSATA drive. That's 3TB in one partition.
Don't use it for booting though.
Have Debian Squeeze and a recent kernel (2.6.33, now 2.6.34.2).

[gknippels]

Thanks for your replies.

I'm using the Debian Squeeze release that is provided through the installer program.

uname -a reports:
Linux debian 2.6.32-5-kirkwood #1 Sat Jul 24 13:37:14 UTC 2010 armv5tel GNU/Linux

From your replies it is still not immediately clear what hard drive size new buyers of the plug can expect to work for booting.

Guido
 

[gknippels]

All,

I finally managed to use larger harddisk for booting the plug. The installer only worked for me on 500 GB disks, and failed on 1.0 TB, 1.5TB and 2.0 TB disks. I tried them all and always the partitioning lead to negative values for the partition sizes.

What worked for me is to take the 500 GB disk with a properly installed plugsystem on it and 'copy' it to a larger disk. I partitioned the 2.0 TB disk on another regular linux system with the fdisk command and created a 250 MB ext2 bootable section, a ~2TB ext3 section, and a 1.5 GB linux swap section (in an extended partition). I then copied with the program Gparted the three partitions into the three empty partitions on the 2TB disk.

After all the copying was done the plug now happily boots and runs from a 2Tb disk. Simply copying the partitions directly with GParted doesn't work since it creates an EFI FAT on the disk that is not recognized by the plug. With fdisk you create an MSDOS style FAT that works well (but is limited to 2.0 TB disk size).

Guido

[cirrus.frank]

ciao Guido,
mi puoi spiegare (meglio in privato) come sei riuscito a far riconoscere il seagate da 500 gb allo sheeva e a farlo partire da boot ? sono giorni che provo ma non riesco a venirne a capo,grazie.
Frank

cirrus.frank@hotmail.it

[gknippels]

Frank,

Sorry, I don't speak (or read) Italian. I think (but I could be completely wrong!) you are asking for instructions on how to prepare the 500 GB disk as boot disk for the sheeva plug. Could you please restate your question in English (or Dutch or German if English is not an option).

Guido

[cirrus.frank]

Hello,
I'm sorry,Guido is an italian name and I thought you were Italian ....
Yes, i'm looking for instructions on how to prepare the 500 GB disk as boot disk for the sheeva plug.
I'm try and try but my seagate HD 250gb 2,5 is not working.

Thank you.
Frank

[gknippels]

Frank,

I followed the instructions on:

http://www.cyrius.com/debian/kirkwood/sheevaplug/install.html

This worked for me with a 500Gb disk, but failed with the larger disks.

Guido

[cirrus.frank]

Thank you,
i know already this link, but i have difficult with mine HD.perhaps it's not compatible,it's a seagate momentus 5400 - 250 gb 2,5 .st9250827as.
Your sheeva now boot by the Hard disk ? i want install all my software on Hard disk and not use SD for start .This is possible ? maybe i can try to buy a seagate HD like your.
Thank you,Frank

[gknippels]

Frank,

What kind of problems do you run into? Are there any error messages you can share with us?
When I tried to use the installer with larger harddisks, it reported negative partition sizes and 'bad magic numbers' and broke of the installation. Is this the same problem that you run into? Or is it something else?

Guido

[cirrus.frank]

hello,
sheeva dont' see hard disk if it's connected to esata port,but if i use usb port,sheeva see hard disk.
I want use esata port and boot the system by hard disk. Two days ago my SD was broken and i want use the hard disk for no have this problem.but i want be sure that it's working at 100%.
Thank you
Frank

[gknippels]

Frank,

I'm sorry, but I don't have any good suggestions on what to try if the plug doesn't see your eSata drive at all (besides the obvious ones, like checking cables/connectors etc). In my case it always detected all of the hard drives I tried (0.5 Tb, 1.0 Tb, 1.5 Tb and 2.0 Tb) but only successfully installed on the 0.5 Tb (Seagate harddisk ST3500312CS).
Perhaps somebody else has a good suggestion, but I dont' know how to help you out any further.

Guido

[cirrus.frank]

Guido,
thank you for informations. This is not a problem,if you said that Seagate harddisk ST3500312CS is full compatible and working at 100%,i will looking to buy it.
Perhaps with mine HD i have a cable/connector problem.
Do you use a external box with power supply with Seagate harddisk ST3500312CS ?
For me is very important to know if the boot start by the hard disk. The price of SLC SD is more or less the same of  a sata HD,but a hard disk has a more long life then a SD card.
bye, Frank

[gknippels]

Frank,

I do use a separate power supply for the harddisk.

Good luck.

Guido