- May 7, 2002
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I noticed someting strange, in my BIOS, it reports some HDs using CHS, and others using LBA.
However, all HDs are over 500GB, so that pretty much means they are all using LBA addressing mode.
With the new SATA HD I got, I did some testing.
If I plug in the unformatted HD, (Hot swap), and format the HD, on next boot, BIOS claims CHS mode. Everything is fine with the HD though, no data loss or anything.
If I delete the partition (so it is a unformatted HD again), on boot, BIOS says LBA. If I then format the drive, on the next boot, BIOS always says it is LBA now.
So something is setting the CHS flag when I hot-swap a unformatted HD--BUT, like I said, windows looks to be using LBA, since no data loss after the 127GB mark, but disk management wrote a CHS flag into the bootblock for some strange reason?
Long story short, anyone know of a utility that can tell me what addressing mode windows is using to access the HDs?
However, all HDs are over 500GB, so that pretty much means they are all using LBA addressing mode.
With the new SATA HD I got, I did some testing.
If I plug in the unformatted HD, (Hot swap), and format the HD, on next boot, BIOS claims CHS mode. Everything is fine with the HD though, no data loss or anything.
If I delete the partition (so it is a unformatted HD again), on boot, BIOS says LBA. If I then format the drive, on the next boot, BIOS always says it is LBA now.
So something is setting the CHS flag when I hot-swap a unformatted HD--BUT, like I said, windows looks to be using LBA, since no data loss after the 127GB mark, but disk management wrote a CHS flag into the bootblock for some strange reason?
Long story short, anyone know of a utility that can tell me what addressing mode windows is using to access the HDs?
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