The problem with the large disks is the evil hack they did to add lba48 (i.e. >137GB) addressing to IDE drives. If the IDE driver doesn't handle it right it corrupts everything by reading or writing the wrong sectors.

The lba48 hack is a testament to the corner cutting the IDE drive makers do. In lba48 mode, the driver writes 24 bits of the address to a set of registers. It then writes the last 24 bits to the same registers. So if the driver botches the lba48 setup or the double write for the address, your large disk just got crap scribbled who knows where. The scsi command set can be insane in its complexity, but IDE is crazy in its hack on top of a cludge design.

I'm not sure how complete the lba48 support is in the different linux kernels. I don't have such disks so I haven't kept up.

David "LordBeatnik"