From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Thu Mar 16 15:28:12 2006 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 79E0816A420 for ; Thu, 16 Mar 2006 15:28:12 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from sub02@freeode.co.uk) Received: from mail.freeode.co.uk (freeode.co.uk [213.162.123.162]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 7302B43D5D for ; Thu, 16 Mar 2006 15:28:11 +0000 (GMT) (envelope-from sub02@freeode.co.uk) Received: from lexx.freeode.co.uk (lexx.freeode.co.uk [10.10.10.2]) by mail.freeode.co.uk (8.13.4/8.13.4) with ESMTP id k2GFS9JZ014122 for ; Thu, 16 Mar 2006 15:28:09 GMT (envelope-from sub02@freeode.co.uk) From: John Murphy To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Date: Thu, 16 Mar 2006 15:28:09 +0000 Message-ID: References: <200603140049.k2E0nQES021139@clunix.cl.msu.edu> <44195444.1050607@aruba.it> In-Reply-To: <44195444.1050607@aruba.it> X-Mailer: Forte Agent 1.93/32.576 English (American) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Subject: Re: Using 'incorrect' HD geometry. X-BeenThere: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list Reply-To: sub02@freeode.co.uk List-Id: User questions List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Thu, 16 Mar 2006 15:28:12 -0000 Thanks Lila, your success encouraged me to try and you were quite right that "your win partition is pretty safe with freebsd fdisk." Unfortunately the install failed saying: Write failure on transfer! (wrote 77187 bytes of 1425408 bytes) And loads of errors like the following were shown on the Alt F2 screen: /stand/cpio: invalid header: checksum error /stand/cpio: warning: skipped 723757 bytes of junk /stand/cpio: : No such file or directory /stand/cpio: invalid header: checksum error /stand/cpio: warning: skipped 4096 bytes of junk /stand/cpio: : No such file or directory [...] acd0: FAILURE - READ_BIG HARDWARE ERROR asc=0x08 ascq=0x03 error=0 I tried leaving the partitions (within the ad0s2 slice) as they were first. Then I tried 'Auto defaults for all' and lastly some partition sizes of my own. I even tried installing 5.3 which only managed to write -1 bytes. Which is odd because it must have worked before. Presumably I would need to change the drive geometry in fdisk to the figures which the BIOS indicates. Any one know the implications of doing so for the non bsd slices? Thanks again. -- John.