From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG  Fri Jul 23 08:36:09 2010
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Date: Fri, 23 Jul 2010 08:36:45 +0000
From: "Thomas Mueller" <mueller6727@bellsouth.net>
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Subject: Re: system hangs on; "Probing devices, please wait (this can take a
 while)... "
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> No I'm not going to start ripping my computer apart because FreeBSD can't deal
> with my hard drive. I think the problem is a shortcoming in FreeBSD where it
> can't deal with drives that have old stale RAID metadata on them. I'm just going
> to have to wait until they can. Until then no FreeBSD for me. Back to crappy
> windows.

Don't think you have to go back to crappy windows until you've tried NetBSD
and/or Linux.  NetBSD install is easier than FreeBSD install, I've done both.
There are lots of Linux live CDs that you can run without changing anything 
on the hard drive.  You would get a dmesg that you could examine.  You can 
get a lot of information on the many Linux distributions, and BSD too, on

http://distrowatch.com/

NetBSD installation CD also gives you a good dmesg that you can examine, and
you can go to a /bin/sh shell to view it with less.

Tom