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Date: Thu, 08 Aug 1996 08:37:53 -0500 (EST)
From: "Jeffrey M. Metcalf" <jeffrey_m._metcalf@ccmail.bms.com>
Subject: Re[2]: Repair boot sector of IDE hard drive
To: tcg@ime.net
Cc: metcalf@imagine.com, questions@freebsd.org,
        joseph_m._o'connor@ccgate1.bms.com
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     Thanks,
     
     Just as a final note, my collegue and I managed to install FreeBSD 
     successfully to the entire hard drive and utilized the full 1272 MB of
     space.  Does that shed any light as to whether it was our BIOS or IDE
     interface doing the translation, or is was the Ontrack Disk Manager?
     
     We aren't too unhappy at this point that FreeBSD takes up the entire
     drive.  However, an interesting afterthought.  My collegue has two
     IDE hard drives > 1GB in size.  We only installed to the slave drive
     and he reserves the 'Master', C:, drive for DOS and MS Windows.
     His C: drive's data is fine, but DOS fdisk reports that it too now 
     has only a maximum size of 504MB.  Fips reports
     a corrupted boot sector for the drive entirely filled with FreeBSD,
     but doesn't report any such corruption on his C drive.  What might 
     this imply about his setup?
     
     Regards,
     
     JM


______________________________ Reply Separator _________________________________
Subject: Re: Repair boot sector of IDE hard drive
Author:  tcg@ime.net at *Internet*
Date:    08/8/1996 2:51 am


Jeffrey M. Metcalf wrote:
> 
>      Hello,
> 
>      In preparing an installation of FreeBSD 2.1, a collegue of mine and I 
>      used DOS fdisk to partition an IDE hard drive and through one process 
>      or another, managed to corrupt the boot sector.  We do not have a
>      backup of the boot sector and would like to know if there is a way 
>      to repair it.  We know the geometry of the hard drive.  It is a
>      1272MB hard drive with a geometry of 2466 cyls, 16 heads, and
>      63 sectors.  Currently, DOS fdisk reports that the maximum size 
>      of the hard drive available for a primary DOS partition is
>      504MB, when this is clearly not the case.  We want to correct the 
>      boot sector so that DOS fdisk will recognize the 1272MB as the
>      maximum available size for a primary DOS partition.
     
Dos can't read a disk that size without some sort of translation. 
ie: LBA, or others. (Ontrack Disk manager.. <yuk>)
     
Were you running something like Ontrack Disk manager! 
I sure hope not! If you were it's a gonner! Thus any data is as 
well!
If not, And your BIOS or IDE Interface card is translating, Then 
somehow they got hosed! Check the settings, Do a FDISK /MBR to 
fix the boot record.
WARNING!!
DO NOT USE FDISK /MBR IF USING A DISK MANAGER FOR TRANSLATION. 
As well as give up on installing FreeBSD untill you get some
hardware to do the translation! ie: LBA IDE interface, (Improperly
 called EIDE)
     
     
-Enjoy
Gary
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