# New Maxtor HD is Bizarre & a Linux question **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [November 11, 2003, 1:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/new-maxtor-hd-is-bizarre-a-linux-question/212599 "2003-11-11T13:11:26Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![World\_Eater](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/f04885/32.png) [@World\_Eater](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/World_Eater)\ **Post date:** [November 11, 2003, 1:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/new-maxtor-hd-is-bizarre-a-linux-question/212599/1 "2003-11-11T13:11:26Z")
Bought the final piece of the puzzle yesterday for my new computer. I’ve had it up and running for a month or so and aside of a bad dimm of DDR, most of the kinks have been worked out. I have it as a dual boot with win98 on a 3 gig drive, which I use just for gaming, and a 12 gig with winXP, which I use for everything else. I was mindful of what I installed on the machine because I knew I would tear it down and reinstall everything as soon as I got a bigger drive. So I get a new HD yesterday, a 80 gig Maxtor. While I’m not the supreme master of HDs, I’m very comfortable partitioning and formatting, which I’ve done dozens of times before. I opened the package and there was a CD bundled with the drive. Thinking this was fairly odd, I opened the booklet which recommended _against_ using FDISK, and to use their _Maxblast_ utility to do the partition and format. I used FDISK on my 40 gig, so to hell with this CD, I’ll use FDISK on this new one as well. I install it, set the jumper to CS, and to make a long stupid story short, it’s only showing 12 gigs available. I go into bios, and bios is telling me the drive is 81 gigs, so it’s not like they stuck the wrong sticker on the drive. I surrender and make a bootable floppy from the CD the provided, but that glitched out on me and said a bunch of files were missing. It was late so I stopped there and will investigate further after work today. Any advice? Secondly, once I get this thing up and running, I want to dual boot Linux and XP. I have Redhat 7.3 Valhalla on my other machine, but I was wondering if I should try something newer. Could anyone recommend a version to play with, or is RH 7.3 fine? I was looking at SUSE or DEBIAN, which from my understanding are highly regarded. ---
**Author:** ![HugoRed](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/6bbea6/32.png) [@HugoRed](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HugoRed)\ **Post date:** [November 11, 2003, 1:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/new-maxtor-hd-is-bizarre-a-linux-question/212599/2 "2003-11-11T13:40:10Z")
I used Maxtor’s MaxBlast utility on a hard drive and am sorry. Norton cannot optimize this drive because they use a Dynamic Drive overlay and I don’t know how to remove it. With newer Windows OS’s it is not necessary. I have even formatted and re-installed everything and still the DDO is there. It may be in firmware, I don’t know. ---
**Author:** ![leenmi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/f1d935/32.png) [@leenmi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/leenmi)\ **Post date:** [November 11, 2003, 1:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/new-maxtor-hd-is-bizarre-a-linux-question/212599/3 "2003-11-11T13:52:58Z")
Can’t help you with the disk problem. You have tried googling it, right? About the Linux distro, go to [ibiblio.org](http://ibiblio.org) and try whatever distros look interesting. Mandrake, Suse, Debian, Redhat - these are good, full featured distros. With an 80GB drive, there’s not much point to a minimalist distro, but I likes them. Peanut is easy to install and has a good mix of applications while staying small. Vector is even smaller. I like it a lot, but it is Slackware based. Nothing wrong with slackware, really, I just don’t like it. But I like Vector. It’s complicated. I keep eyeing Yoper (Your Operating System). It looks like a good distro, but there’s a glitch in the iso I donwloaded. Seriously: [http://www.ibiblio.org/pub/Linux/distributions/](http://www.ibiblio.org/pub/Linux/distributions/) Have fun ---
**Author:** ![SpaceDog](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/spacedog/32/9932_2.png) [@SpaceDog](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SpaceDog)\ **Post date:** [November 11, 2003, 2:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/new-maxtor-hd-is-bizarre-a-linux-question/212599/4 "2003-11-11T14:15:22Z")
Ah, the exact thing happened to me with my shiny new 80Gb drive a while back. It may have been a Maxtor too, can’t remember, but I didn’t get a CD. Anyroads I put it in, fired up FDISK and got the same as you. Odd, thought I, so I fiddled and partitioned and fiddled and stuff. Nope FDISK still thinking it’s only 13Gb or so. I said screw it, assumed FDISK was mental and put in all the sizes as either percentages or ‘use the rest of the space’ based on the assumptiom that it really was an 80Gb drive. Worked perfectly, I assume that FDISK has some display glitch or something with large drives. Hope that helps. SD ---
**Author:** ![Popup](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/94ad74/32.png) [@Popup](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Popup)\ **Post date:** [November 11, 2003, 2:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/new-maxtor-hd-is-bizarre-a-linux-question/212599/5 "2003-11-11T14:31:40Z")
I can’t help with the HD problem, butI can address this > [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by World Eater \* > \*\*Secondly, once I get this thing up and running, I want to dual boot Linux and XP. I have Redhat 7.3 Valhalla on my other machine, but I was wondering if I should try something newer. Could anyone recommend a version to play with, or is RH 7.3 fine? I was looking at SUSE or DEBIAN, which from my understanding are highly regarded. \*\* There’s nothing wrong with RH7.3. You’ve already got kernel 2.4.18, which isn’t very far behind the 2.4.20 shipped with RH9. The main difference is in the eye-candy. XFree86 v4.3 supports a bit more fun features, and the newer version of KDE looks gorgeous, but behind the scenes there’s not much news. Another good resource to keep track of linux distributions is [distrowatch](http://www.distrowatch.com/index.php?language=EN). They keep an up-to-date list of all major (and several minor) distributions. ---
**Author:** ![Q.E.D](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/q/51bf81/32.png) [@Q.E.D](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Q.E.D)\ **Post date:** [November 11, 2003, 3:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/new-maxtor-hd-is-bizarre-a-linux-question/212599/6 "2003-11-11T15:11:09Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by HugoRed \* > **I used Maxtor’s MaxBlast utility on a hard drive and am sorry. Norton cannot optimize this drive because they use a Dynamic Drive overlay and I don’t know how to remove it.** [Try this.](http://maxtor.custhelp.com/cgi-bin/maxtor.cfg/php/enduser/std_adp.php?p_sid=B3S3_4Yg&p_lva=&p_faqid=522&p_created=988320874&p_sp=cF9zcmNoPTEmcF9ncmlkc29ydD0mcF9yb3dfY250PTMxJnBfc2VhcmNoX3RleHQ9JnBfc2VhcmNoX3R5cGU9MyZwX3Byb2RfbHZsMT03MiZwX3Byb2RfbHZsMj03MyZwX2NhdF9sdmwxPX5hbnl_JnBfY2F0X2x2bDI9fmFueX4mcF9wYWdlPTE*&p_li=) ---
**Author:** ![rsa](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/839c29/32.png) [@rsa](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/rsa)\ **Post date:** [November 11, 2003, 3:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/new-maxtor-hd-is-bizarre-a-linux-question/212599/7 "2003-11-11T15:41:10Z")
I recently installed the same drive in my computer and had all sorts of problems, but much of that was due to having an old unsupported BIOS. I’m assuming that you have a recent BIOS that can handle drives over 13GB. Since your BIOS is reporting that correct size but Windows isn’t, I would first try formatting the disk from within Windows rather than using FDISK. I bet that might solve the problem. ---
**Author:** ![rsa](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/839c29/32.png) [@rsa](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/rsa)\ **Post date:** [November 11, 2003, 3:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/new-maxtor-hd-is-bizarre-a-linux-question/212599/8 "2003-11-11T15:44:09Z")
BTW, if all else fails, Maxtor has free 800 phone support. ---
**Author:** ![NutMagnet](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/ea5d25/32.png) [@NutMagnet](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/NutMagnet)\ **Post date:** [November 11, 2003, 6:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/new-maxtor-hd-is-bizarre-a-linux-question/212599/9 "2003-11-11T18:25:18Z")
**WorldEater** When you have the drive formatted and ready to go, leave it in as the secondary drive and use this freeware. [http://www.xxcopy.com/](http://www.xxcopy.com/) After installing it (takes \< 1 minute) you open a DOS window from Windows, type in xxcopy c: d: /clone and it copies everything from your current c: drive to the new drive, including files in use, registry entries, everything. You can still work in Windows while it’s running. If you do, run it a second time and it will do an incremental copy of changed files from C: to D: Shut down the machine, swap the drives, rejumper them and boot. I’ve used this on four different occasions and it’s never failed. Be sure to read the section on the website about long filenames, and read the instructions here [http://www.xxcopy.com/xxcopy10.htm](http://www.xxcopy.com/xxcopy10.htm) before starting. ---
**Author:** ![World\_Eater](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/f04885/32.png) [@World\_Eater](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/World_Eater)\ **Post date:** [November 12, 2003, 1:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/new-maxtor-hd-is-bizarre-a-linux-question/212599/10 "2003-11-12T01:55:18Z")
Boy you guys are good, thanks for all the helpful responses. I used **Spacedog’s** technique, and as you all can see, I’m posting right here before your very eyes. So to recap, one 80 gig drive now with XP on it. Next up is finding a distro for my 12 gig drive. One last thing, Lilo or Grub? ---
**Author:** ![World\_Eater](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/f04885/32.png) [@World\_Eater](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/World_Eater)\ **Post date:** [November 12, 2003, 2:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/new-maxtor-hd-is-bizarre-a-linux-question/212599/11 "2003-11-12T02:05:43Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Popup \* > **I can’t help with the HD problem, butI can address this > There’s nothing wrong with RH7.3. You’ve already got kernel 2.4.18, which isn’t very far behind the 2.4.20 shipped with RH9. The main difference is in the eye-candy. XFree86 v4.3 supports a bit more fun features, and the newer version of KDE looks gorgeous, but behind the scenes there’s not much news.** Sorry this confused me a bit. What’s XFree86? ---
**Author:** ![Some\_Guy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/439d5e/32.png) [@Some\_Guy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Some_Guy)\ **Post date:** [November 12, 2003, 4:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/new-maxtor-hd-is-bizarre-a-linux-question/212599/12 "2003-11-12T04:31:08Z")
XFree86 is the version of the X Windowing System that’s commonly used with Linux. Essentially, it’s the lowest level component of the GUI. KDE and Gnome are desktop environments that sit on top of it. XFree86 4.3 is the current version. ---
**Author:** ![Nanoda](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/ce73a5/32.png) [@Nanoda](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nanoda)\ **Post date:** [November 12, 2003, 4:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/new-maxtor-hd-is-bizarre-a-linux-question/212599/13 "2003-11-12T04:39:33Z")
X is the window manager. Don’t know anything about GRUB - LILO’s been what I use on all my machines, some of them pretty odd, and it works okay. [Here’s one](http://www.galahtech.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=5264&st=0&#entry54076) opinion that may be informed. ---
**Author:** ![Urban\_Ranger](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/e9c0ed/32.png) [@Urban\_Ranger](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Urban_Ranger)\ **Post date:** [November 12, 2003, 5:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/new-maxtor-hd-is-bizarre-a-linux-question/212599/14 "2003-11-12T05:34:59Z")
GRUB is better than lilo. Much better. ---
**Author:** ![FyreFiend](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/919ad9/32.png) [@FyreFiend](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FyreFiend)\ **Post date:** [November 12, 2003, 6:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/new-maxtor-hd-is-bizarre-a-linux-question/212599/15 "2003-11-12T06:04:52Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Nanoda \* > \*\*X is the window manager. > \ > \*\* Nope. It’s a little hard to explain to someone that’s only used Windows or MacOS but with Unix the GUI is multi-layered. X (or X-Windows) is the graphics server which is what passes how to draw the graphics to your video card. All your graphical programs have to talk to the X server to get the graphics to the screen. On top of that you have your window manager which handles how the program windows are drawn and how they’re placed on the screen. You can run a graphical program right on top of X but you won’t be able to move it when it pops up on the screen. There are also DEs (Desktop envirments (spelling)) like Gnome or KDE. These give you a desktop like you’d get with Windows or MacOS and usually include a WM (Window Manager), File Manager (like Windows Exporer or Finder), and a bunch of other programs. You can run programs without X. They all use text only or very crude graphics like old DOS programs. There are also FrameBuffer programs that can do pretty graphics without X but I’ve never used it so I can’t really comment on them. ---
**Author:** ![World\_Eater](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/f04885/32.png) [@World\_Eater](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/World_Eater)\ **Post date:** [November 12, 2003, 12:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/new-maxtor-hd-is-bizarre-a-linux-question/212599/16 "2003-11-12T12:32:04Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Urban Ranger \* > \*\*GRUB is better than lilo. Much better. \*\* I’m using GRUB on my old dual boot 98/RedHat box, and everything is peachy. I’ve heard that Lilo is easier to remove from my MBR then grub, just in case I ever want to take it off. Aside from that GRUB is fine with me. ---
**Author:** ![World\_Eater](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/f04885/32.png) [@World\_Eater](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/World_Eater)\ **Post date:** [November 12, 2003, 12:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/new-maxtor-hd-is-bizarre-a-linux-question/212599/17 "2003-11-12T12:35:23Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by FyreFiend \* > \*\*Nope. > It’s a little hard to explain to someone that’s only used Windows or MacOS but with Unix the GUI is multi-layered. X (or X-Windows) is the graphics server which is what passes how to draw the graphics to your video card. All your graphical programs have to talk to the X server to get the graphics to the screen. > On top of that you have your window manager which handles how the program windows are drawn and how they’re placed on the screen. You can run a graphical program right on top of X but you won’t be able to move it when it pops up on the screen. > There are also DEs (Desktop envirments (spelling)) like Gnome or KDE. These give you a desktop like you’d get with Windows or MacOS and usually include a WM (Window Manager), File Manager (like Windows Exporer or Finder), and a bunch of other programs. > > You can run programs without X. They all use text only or very crude graphics like old DOS programs. There are also FrameBuffer programs that can do pretty graphics without X but I’ve never used it so I can’t really comment on them. \*\* Ok, this is kind of making sense. As I’ve said before I’m running RH 7.3 on my old comp. It has KDE on it (version 2.0 I think), but I’m unaware of X windows running on it. Do I need a desktop environment _and_ something like XFree86? Or do I run one or the other? ---
**Author:** ![dylan\_73](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/ecccb3/32.png) [@dylan\_73](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dylan_73)\ **Post date:** [November 12, 2003, 1:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/new-maxtor-hd-is-bizarre-a-linux-question/212599/18 "2003-11-12T13:15:42Z")
No, you’re already running X on that machine. KDE runs on X. I would go for a newer distribution, because KDE 3 is a lot nicer than 2. Oh, and another vote for Grub. ---
**Author:** ![handy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/b5a626/32.png) [@handy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/handy)\ **Post date:** [November 12, 2003, 2:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/new-maxtor-hd-is-bizarre-a-linux-question/212599/19 "2003-11-12T14:40:58Z")
" it’s only showing 12 gigs available. I go into bios, and bios is telling me the drive is 81 gigs," In the future you can try Fdisk & delete any partitions & delete primary Dos partition & start again. If you don’t want to do this, use Partition Magic. Can take care of all this for you: [http://www.powerquest.com/partitionmagic/pmdetails.cfm](http://www.powerquest.com/partitionmagic/pmdetails.cfm) “ENHANCE OPERATING SYSTEM PERFORMANCE PartitionMagic allows you to fine tune your system performance by converting to a more efficient file system, changing cluster sizes, or adding a Linux SWAP file partition.” ---
**Author:** ![World\_Eater](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/f04885/32.png) [@World\_Eater](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/World_Eater)\ **Post date:** [November 12, 2003, 4:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/new-maxtor-hd-is-bizarre-a-linux-question/212599/20 "2003-11-12T16:16:18Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by dylan\_73 \* > **No, you’re already running X on that machine. KDE runs on X. I would go for a newer distribution, because KDE 3 is a lot nicer than 2.** This is going to sound stupid, but KDE _runs on_ X? I know any distro I install will do everything for me, (like it did on my last comp), but I would like to understand the underlying machinery here. I also read those links, and again I’ve been leaning towards Debian, however I hear the install is hell. Supposedly Debian and SUSE have more out of the box multimedia support. This is a good thing as I barely even know how to change a directory in the console, let alone install new drivers. [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/new-maxtor-hd-is-bizarre-a-linux-question/212599.md?page=2)