Date: Fri, 9 Jan 2004 11:06:18 -0600 From: "Andrew L. Gould" <algould@datawok.com> To: Konrad Scorciapino <konrad@scorciapino.org>, freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Booting from a hard disk not supported by the BIOS Message-ID: <200401091106.18854.algould@datawok.com> In-Reply-To: <20040109143634.42e655bc.konrad@scorciapino.org> References: <20040109143634.42e655bc.konrad@scorciapino.org>
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On Friday 09 January 2004 10:36 am, Konrad Scorciapino wrote: > Hi, > > I've got an old computer with 2 hard disks. The first has 2GB and FreeBSD > installed; the second, 20GB and windows installed. However, the computer's > BIOS is quite old and doesn't detect the second hard disk, so I cannot boot > from it. > > So how can I do that? I've tried installing FreeBSD's boot manager, but > apparently it gets the devices' information from BIOS, since the only hard > disk that appears in the boot list is the first one. Or perhaps there is a > file somewhere to edit and add all information. > > Anyway, any advice would be appreciated. > > Thanks. First, try to find a BIOS update for the motherboard that will allow for larger hard drives. If that's not available, Maxtor has a free download, MaxBlast 3, that will create a BIOS overlay that will allow the BIOS to see the larger hard drive. http://www.maxtor.com/en/support/downloads/maxblast3.htm 1. You can use MaxBlast with non-Maxtor hard drives. It's not supported; but I've used it on a Fujitsu laptop hdd. 2. Although the BIOS will see the larger hard drive, MaxBlast will want to prep the hard drive for installation of Windows (fat32 or ntfs). I have not tried to install FreeBSD via the BIOS overlay. If you try and succeed, definitely let us know! Andrew Gould
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