From owner-freebsd-questions Mon Sep 16 09:13:25 1996 Return-Path: owner-questions Received: (from root@localhost) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.7.5/8.7.3) id JAA13492 for questions-outgoing; Mon, 16 Sep 1996 09:13:25 -0700 (PDT) Received: from quackerjack.cc.vt.edu (quackerjack.cc.vt.edu [198.82.160.250]) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.7.5/8.7.3) with ESMTP id JAA13486 for ; Mon, 16 Sep 1996 09:13:21 -0700 (PDT) Received: from sable.cc.vt.edu (sable.cc.vt.edu [128.173.16.30]) by quackerjack.cc.vt.edu (8.7.1/8.7.1) with SMTP id MAA14861; Mon, 16 Sep 1996 12:13:19 -0400 (EDT) Received: from boxer.cslab.vt.edu (boxer.cslab.vt.edu [198.82.184.20]) by sable.cc.vt.edu (8.6.12/8.6.12) with SMTP id MAA24886; Mon, 16 Sep 1996 12:13:18 -0400 Date: Mon, 16 Sep 1996 12:13:18 -0400 (EDT) From: "Daniel T. Hagan" X-Sender: dhagan@boxer.cslab.vt.edu To: Paul Walsh cc: questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Primary partition info erased In-Reply-To: <323D61F1.44BA@nation-net.com> Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: owner-questions@freebsd.org X-Loop: FreeBSD.org Precedence: bulk On Mon, 16 Sep 1996, Paul Walsh wrote: > Is there a utility to help restore the primary partition information for > a disk with a fipsed freeBSD partition? > > I'm not really sure how it got lost , but it was while I was using > Win95, a couple of crashes later and I could no longer boot from the > disk. > > BIOS finds it but then that's it. > > Are you going to tell me to reformat the disk, repartition and restore > from backups? Fortunately I can , but I'm wondering about using the fips > utility at all in the future. > > Regards Paul Walsh > As I recall from last year when I installed for the first time, there should be a fips created backup of the hd's boot-table/mbr. However I could be wrong (it certainly wouldn't be the first time either :-)). If you are warry of FIPS and you have to reinstall anyway, do this (or something like it, since, again, I may have the order slightly wrong): 1. Fdisk drive to include a small DOS partition at front (~20MB). 2. Install FreeBSD using the 20Mb partition to help FreeBSD get the geometry right (assuming you have a big drive). I would delete the 20Mb partition and install over it plus some during the FreeBSD install). Don't bother to install the boot manager. 3. Install Win95 on remaining space. (watch out for BIOS boot limit, is it 540MB on PC's? I can't remember.) 4. Pull boot manager off FreeBSD CD-ROM (or internet, whatever is appropriate) and install it. I used this procedure with my computer and it worked like a charm and no FIPs threatening my HD's. My setup: 1.2Gig WDCaviar EIDE 500MB FreeBSD 700MB Win95 1.6Gig WDCaviar EIDE 700MB FreeBSD 900MB Win95 Those sizes are estimated obviously, and from memory so they may not be exact, but they are about right. I know the EIDE's suck, but I can't afford SCSI (or else I'd have it believe me). And I'm sorry about the Win95, but I needed it for the word processing for my classes. Anyway, it works great, and hopefully will for you too, Daniel CS Major dhagan@vt.edu