From owner-freebsd-questions Tue Jan 8 6: 2:55 2002 Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from msgbas1.net.europe.agilent.com (msgbas1x.net.europe.agilent.com [192.25.19.109]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 5EFD837B420 for ; Tue, 8 Jan 2002 06:02:50 -0800 (PST) Received: from msgrel1.germany.agilent.com (msgrel1.germany.agilent.com [134.40.2.57]) by msgbas1.net.europe.agilent.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 19C9B59F for ; Tue, 8 Jan 2002 15:02:45 +0100 (MET) Received: from pollux.germany.agilent.com (pollux.germany.agilent.com [134.40.35.20]) by msgrel1.germany.agilent.com (Postfix) with SMTP id 580EC501 for ; Tue, 8 Jan 2002 15:02:49 +0100 (MET) Received: from 134.40.35.20 by pollux.germany.agilent.com (InterScan E-Mail VirusWall NT); Tue, 08 Jan 2002 15:02:48 +0100 Received: by pollux with Internet Mail Service (5.5.2653.19) id ; Tue, 8 Jan 2002 15:02:48 +0100 Message-ID: From: john_findlay@non.agilent.com Reply-To: gew03@dial.pipex.com To: freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: FreeBSD4.4 - Installation Problem with fdisk Date: Tue, 8 Jan 2002 15:02:45 +0100 MIME-Version: 1.0 X-Mailer: Internet Mail Service (5.5.2653.19) Content-Type: text/plain; charset="ISO-8859-1" Sender: owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk List-ID: List-Archive: (Web Archive) List-Help: (List Instructions) List-Subscribe: List-Unsubscribe: X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG I have a maxtor 20GB hard drive (data from Maxtor)--> Model Number Actual_Cyls Max Cycls Hds Sect SizeGB SizeMB 52049U4 39,703 16,383 16 63 20.4 19,468 Attached to my Asus P5A-B motherboard. And I am having some trouble installing FreeBSD4.4 on it. The problem is that fdisk doesn't seem to be able to get the disk geometry correct. The disk starts off with absolutely nothing on it apart from low level formatting, and then I stuff in the FreeBSD cd-rom and start the install . When it gets to the fdisk part, fdisk reports it as a 2 GB drive. I have tried running the board's BIOS in auto mode, as well as the three 'manual' modes (normal/LBA/large). In each circumstance I set the drive geometry in fdisk to match what the bios is reporting, and the total disk size reported in the top right corner (in brackets) changes to read the correct amount, but the amount of free space reported below where you specify the slices resolutely refuses to budge. I have tried it also with a disk pre-partitioned with tiny dos partitions at the start or end, but to no avail. Has anybody else come across this? For me this is a re-run of a problem I have had with NT4, which also refuses to recognise this as anything more than a 2GB disk. With NT, using such trickery as partition magic to add partitions after installing will end up causing the system to fail to boot with 'inaccessible boot device' messages if you go beyond 5-6 GB. The system goes back to normal if the added partitions are dropped. NT will happily recognise my Quantum 8GB disk. FreeBSD 4.4's fdisk also recognises by Quantum 8GB disk quite happily, and Stuff like Win98, Slackare 8.0, Red Hat 7.2 will go in nicely on either the Quantum 8GB or the Maxtor 20GB. Is there a problem with FreeBSD 4.4's fdisk?, or have I got an unfortunate combination of disk/bios? Meanwhile, I'll have to wait until I have moved Win98 onto the maxtor, then I can put FreeBSD onto the quantum..... Regards John S. Findlay gew03@dial.pipex.com To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message