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Date:      Wed, 16 Oct 2002 14:53:43 -0400
From:      "John Daniels" <jmd526@hotmail.com>
To:        freebsd-questions@freebsd.org
Subject:   SYSINSTALL/FDISK
Message-ID:  <F128DKvPEkGhAj5p1Fj0000050f@hotmail.com>

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Hi:

Please read the whole post before replying.  Yes, I know that
DOS allows 4 PRIMARY Partitions and the history and purpose
of an EXTENDED Partition.

I am installing 4.7-REL on a PC with one PRIMARY and one
EXTENDED partition.  The PRIMARY  partition is FAT and I have
W98 there.  The EXTENDED partition is empty as it was originally
set up to be a place for FreeBSD.  Unfortuneately, I now
understand that FreeBSD needs to be in a PRIMARY partition.
(EXTENDED was recommended by the disk's customer
service rep was was familiar with Linux but not BSD)

Also, SYSINSTALL's FDISK program says that one should put
FreeBSD in a partition labeled as "unused".  However, the
"Change Type" command lets me change the EXTENDED
partition to FreeBSD.  I tried it and it seemed to work (I could
even make it "bootable") but I decided not to proceed because
I don't know what is going on behind the scenes: is it really
changing the partition to PRIMARY or just making a label
change (is that the same thing)?  I don't want to wind up
with a disk that is unuseable.   And if it is making the
change from EXTENDED to PRIMARY, is  this something that
the BIOS will be OK with?

Alternatively, should I use the SYSINSTALL/FDISK "Delete"
option  on the Partition and then create a new partition/slice
instead of "Change Type"?

If SYSINSTALL's FDISK program will not do what I need can you
direct me to a  tool can I use to change the EXTENDED partition
to a PRIMARY partition?

Thanks,

John Daniels


FYI, SYSINSTALL's FDISK screen is:

Disk Name: ad0
Disk geometry: 4865 cyls/ 255 heads / 63 sectors = 78156225 (38162MB)

  Offset           Size          End        Name   PType    Desc.    Subtype 
  Flags
              0              63              62        -        6       
unused        0
            63  12594897  12594959   ad0s1     2           fat         11
12594960  65561265  78156224   ad0s2     4     extended    15
78156225          9135  78165359       -         6       unused        0



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