From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Sun Jul 31 14:15:01 2005 Return-Path: X-Original-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 562C016A41F for ; Sun, 31 Jul 2005 14:15:01 +0000 (GMT) (envelope-from garys@opusnet.com) Received: from opusnet.com (mail.opusnet.com [209.210.200.6]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id F41DF43D48 for ; Sun, 31 Jul 2005 14:15:00 +0000 (GMT) (envelope-from garys@opusnet.com) Received: from localhost.localhost [70.98.246.232] by opusnet.com with ESMTP (SMTPD32-8.05) id ACDE772A0148; Sun, 31 Jul 2005 07:14:54 -0700 Received: from localhost.localhost (localhost.localhost [127.0.0.1]) by localhost.localhost (8.13.3/8.13.3) with ESMTP id j6VEGBQa032282; Sun, 31 Jul 2005 07:16:11 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from garys@opusnet.com) Received: (from jojo@localhost) by localhost.localhost (8.13.3/8.13.3/Submit) id j6VEG22a032281; Sun, 31 Jul 2005 07:16:02 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from garys@opusnet.com) To: Glenn Dawson References: <4kbr4k9x6z.r4k@mail.opusnet.com> <6.1.0.6.2.20050730185922.0670be10@cobalt.antimatter.net> From: garys@opusnet.com (Gary W. Swearingen) Date: Sun, 31 Jul 2005 07:16:02 -0700 In-Reply-To: <6.1.0.6.2.20050730185922.0670be10@cobalt.antimatter.net> (Glenn Dawson's message of "Sat, 30 Jul 2005 19:08:32 -0700") Message-ID: User-Agent: Gnus/5.1006 (Gnus v5.10.6) XEmacs/21.4 (Jumbo Shrimp, berkeley-unix) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Cc: Nikolas Britton , FreeBSD - Questions Subject: Re: Using a hard drive without partitions X-BeenThere: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: User questions List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Sun, 31 Jul 2005 14:15:01 -0000 Glenn Dawson writes: > The only danger in not having the slice table is that if you use non > BSD tools, such as the ones that come with windows, they will > potentially write over things that that you don't want them to. The FreeBSD FAQ mentions more serious dangers. > Also, without the slice table on your boot disk, the BIOS wont know > what to do since it looks for the active slice and attempts to boot > it. A i386-standard PC BIOS shouldn't, by itself, try to boot anything except the boot code in the MBR. That code can then use the BIOS just for reading more boot code from the disk, without any partition table considerations. That's why most PCs can boot a DD FreeBSD sys. (As soon as enough code is read in, the BIOS can be dispensed with entirely and the 1024'th cyl exceeded even with non-LBA BIOSes. I'm not sure which booters, if any, do this, but probably Lilo & Grub, which both use a partition table.)