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I originally reported this as bug #9468 "cpio fails when writing to Maxtor 40GB IDE hard disk." I am trying to utilize a 40GB Maxtor IDE hard disk. I can successfully create a 40GB partition with fdisk and create a filesystem with 4KB blocks wiht mke2fs. However, when I try to transfer 20+GB of data to it with either cpio or tar, it eventually fails. After the cpio or tar failure, the filesystem appears to be hosed. I'm using an ASUS P2B motherboard with BIOS updated for the big drive and out-of-the-box RH 6.0.
I forgot to mention that I have already used this drive for a month with Windows 98 without any problems.
Originally we wondered if you might be running out of inodes on the shiny new filesystem. 'df -i' will show you how many inodes are in use and free on your filesystems. But that certainly wouldn't explain files disappearing and ending up in odd places. Are you able to try an updated kernel? Can you compile your own 2.2.15pre? or perhaps use the kernel rpm from the 6.2 rawhide beta trees of ftp.redhat.com? There were some fixes in 2.2.14 that may cure what you're seeing.
I checked the inode count when this problem originally manifested itself. That was not the problem. Unfortunately, I am in a production situation and time has run out. I have had to reassign this drive mechanism where it could be put to good use. It's no longer in a Linux system. However, I see that there apparently are at least two other people that have posted problems with large (20GB) Maxtor IDE drives in the linux.redhat.misc newsgroup. I'll forward this bug to them and perchance they can help resolve this.
This should work out of the box in newer releases. Let me know if it doesn't.