HD Install :: fdisk/cfdisk probs w/large drives?

hi mark,
i have similar experience few hours ago.
i think fdisk feel your the partition table of your 20g harddisk is corrupted. fdisk may not accept what pm (bootstar in my case) do to your hdd.you may try to correct with below:
1. backup all important data
2. d/l a low-level formatter in maxtor site, and do a quick llf.
3.connect 20gb hdd to primary master and make sure its jumper setting is correct(cdrom better in secondary master, and nothing else)
4.fdisk under dsl and then mke2fs. check if any partition err reported.
5.if everything ok,REBOOT
6.install to your new partition under dsl.
hope this help, good luck.

I never give up!

After reading other posts dealing with unrecognized disk geometry, I tried booting
with dma set, and I'm able to partition the disk.

After that, I did a frugal install. The frugal_intsal.sh has nodma set as an option. I changed that to dma, ran the frugal install, and ...

SUCCESS!

I am able to boot from my frugally installed partition.

Thanks again for all the suggestions. We can put this thread to bed!

Mark

hmmmmmmmmm.
is there a disk checking util you could use. fsck would push up errors if the drive is bad as well, try that.

As I think I mentioned somewhere earlier in the thread, I can read & partition this disk fine from Suse, Slackware, & Knoppix 3.6 Distros. The problem seems to be with DSL's detection of the drive geometry. I had this same problem with earlier versions of Knoppix up to 3.3.

Mark

original here.