R50E Hard Drive Size Limit?

[jfsmith]

I just attempted to upgrade the 80 Gb drive in my R50E to a new WD 250 Gb drive. I used Acronis True Image to clone the new drive (149 Gb Windows and remainder Linux). The cloning seemed to go well and the new drive looks OK on USB, but when I attempted to boot on it, I got a screen full of "99"s. Is it a size limitation or what? Appreciate any advice.

[ajkula66]

Something must have gone wrong during the cloning process, since there is no known HD limit for these machines...

Good luck.

[mediasponge]

Two possible issues I can think of:

Depending on the bootloader you are using, there may be an issue with the /boot partition being pushed out past the LBA limit. I had a problem like this on an A31p when upgrading from 80GB to 320GB. The GRUB loader has this problem. Unfortunately, I had to nuke the Linux and let Windoze "fix" the MBR. In my case, there was a specific GRUB error (18). Try a Google search for LBA and your boot loader.

The other issue might be in how you did the cloning. Did you pull the old drive out and hook both drives up to some other system to do the cloning, or did you let the R50 do the cloning with one drive hooked up to it through USB? IBM did some strange things in the formatting on some models, and the format of the new drive may have been corrupted by trying to do the cloning on some other system. I used a universal disk adapter that will connect 40 pin ATA, 44 pin ATA or SATA to a USB 2.0 port. I also used Acronis. Worked fine on the A31p, except for the GRUB issue.

-- mediasponge

[jfsmith]

Thanks for the replies. The problem was that when Acronis resized the partitions, it moved the linux loader. Restoring the linux partition resolved the issue. I still don't know what the screen fujll of "99"s meant!

[QcMarque]

Two possible issues I can think of:

Depending on the bootloader you are using, there may be an issue with the /boot partition being pushed out past the LBA limit. I had a problem like this on an A31p when upgrading from 80GB to 320GB. The GRUB loader has this problem. Unfortunately, I had to nuke the Linux and let Windoze "fix" the MBR. In my case, there was a specific GRUB error (18). Try a Google search for LBA and your boot loader.

The other issue might be in how you did the cloning. Did you pull the old drive out and hook both drives up to some other system to do the cloning, or did you let the R50 do the cloning with one drive hooked up to it through USB? IBM did some strange things in the formatting on some models, and the format of the new drive may have been corrupted by trying to do the cloning on some other system. I used a universal disk adapter that will connect 40 pin ATA, 44 pin ATA or SATA to a USB 2.0 port. I also used Acronis. Worked fine on the A31p, except for the GRUB issue.

-- mediasponge

I was having a similar problem on my A31p... I upgraded my 80gb to a 320gb WD Scorpio Blue, and if the drive had any data I would get a disk read error... upon changing the partition size (80GB boot, the rest data) I got the system to run and XP finished installed. Is there a partition size limit on this system (I tried 2 x 149GB and the system would hang, but not give the DRE.)?

[RealBlackStuff]

Depending on the formatting program, there might be a limit of 128GB.
Newer versions shouldn't have that problem.

As to the 999 problem, turn the laptop screen upside down, and you'll see 666, the number of the
No wonder...

[QcMarque]

Well, I've tried the XP Corp install disk as well as Paragon HDD Mgr 2010 Server and Paragon Partition Mgr 2010 Server... every time resulting in the same issue. Oh well, system boots and I have plenty of space overall. Just thought it was odd that I would be having these errors on a brand new drive. Oh well.

Thanks!

[RealBlackStuff]

Were you trying to format in FAT32? That has a limitation of the partition size.
NTFS is the correct format to use on big(ger) HDs.