HELP! Getting disk geometry errors when making partitions

[grrl]

I have a Maxtor 13 Gig hard drive that's about 2 years old. I'm doing a clean install of two different OSs on it, plus some document and swap file partitions. I've done this before successfully, but now I keep getting geometry errors when I try to create anything beyond my second primary.

Partition Magic tells me the actual C H S values should be 1654, 254 and 63. The geometry figures are given as 1655, 255 and 63. But, and this is what confuses me most, the Maxtor label says 16383 cylinders, 16 heads and 63 sectors.

I'm also unable to get the BIOS on my Abit KT7A to allow me to manually enter any figures, although they claim you have that option.

Any idea on what this all means. I've already done a low level format.

 

[obenton]

Best to let BIOS autodetect the drive parameters.

 

[ucla88]

obenton has it right
let your system autodetect the hard drive parameters.
it gets a bit complicated-the actual hdd geometry of newer hdds can't be expressed in simple C, H, and S values, so a certain amount of bios geometry translation takes place.

if you really want to read a more detailed overview, look here.

hdd geometry issues

basically, though, the fact that the numbers don't match is of no concern