CHS Mode

"Cylinder, Head and Sector" mode refers to the old standard BIOS (CMOS) setup table. It used to require the input of the number of disk drive cylinders (Cyld), heads (Hds), write pre-compensation (WPC), landing zone (LZ), and sectors per track (Sect).

As IDE drives have matured, the LZ and WPC were the first parameters to be dropped. They were only used in MFM and RLL drives. Now, very large drives, greater than 8.4 GB, have outgrown the capability of the CHS method of conveying a drives parameters to the computers BIOS. LBA is the current method in use today. This is the best method for breaking inherent Capacity Barriers.

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