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 _________________________________________________________________ Choose an Internet access plan right for you -- try MSN! http://resourcecenter.msn.com/access/plans/default.asp To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message
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