I did some research and contacted Johnny off list.

These are older machines the IDE controlers are early ATA 66
Not all ATA 66 controllers can be used with the big new drives.
They may work for a while, not at all, or only see part of the drive.

I'm not going to tell anyone to "read the man page" on these machines.
Compaq says they had some problems with "Seagate" drives up to 17 GB
This was an LBA problem with the disk controller. A patch is available.

The largest drive Compaq tested in these machines were ATA 66, 22GB drives
I've worked with Compaq PC's and Servers for 15 years, a 30-36 GB drive is
about all these machine can handle on the ATA 66 controller. Or any ATA 66
controller unless it's really new.

This is a 3 drive system
IDE channel 0
    ATA 33 3 GB drive as hda
    CD ROM
IDE channel 1
    160 GB ATA 66/100/133 drive hdb

First rule
    run all hard drives on the first channel and CD ROMs on the second 
channel
    in multi-hard disk machines.
Second rule
    don't mix ATA 33 with ATA 66/100/133
    Not that it can't be done but the slowest device sets the pace, so 
that fast new drive
    runs at ATA 33.
Third rule
    Some manufactures of hard drives have software tools, you can use to 
set the
    speed of the drive, to the speed of the controller, or the slowest 
drive on the system.
    They warn that using the software can cause the drive to fail.
Fourth rule
    LBA is not LBA for all drives on the system, when they are different 
standards
    ATA 33, ATA 66, ATA 100/133 are all different standards.
Sam's rule
    Just because you can doesn't mean you should   ;c)

Best case senerio for the new big drive...
    Get an ATA 66/100/133 controller
    Attach the ATA 66/100/133, 160GB disk to the first channel
    Attach the CD ROM to the second channel
    Eliminate the ATA 33 hard drive it's to slow
    Disable the on board IDE controler.
    Install Gentoo and be happy

Sam.

<snip>


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