Date: Thu, 01 Aug 2002 21:32:42 -0400 From: Jud <jud@myrealbox.com> To: FreeBSD questions mailing list <freebsd-questions@freebsd.org>, Cherie & John Carri <cjcarri@earthlink.net> Subject: Re: Can FreeBSD make a hard drie unbootable by other OS's? Message-ID: <LGMK53ZVIB6YG596752DCLFICKJ.3d49e13a@sparky> In-Reply-To: <1028204666.25136.30.camel@bilbo.ourhome.org>
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8/1/2002 8:24:23 AM, Cherie & John Carri <cjcarri@earthlink.net> wrote: >Many thanks to all the folks who emailed suggestions, with special >thanks to Siegbert Baude. > > To recap, I transferred an old 4.3 Gig Western Digital drive I was >formerly using on a FreeBSD 4.2 system to a newer PC, and attempted to >install Mandrake Linux 8.2; the install was successful, but I could not >boot from the hard drive, only the floppy or CDROM. > > I wiped the drive, created a DOS partition, formatted it, then ran the >DOS "fdisk /mbr". I then installed Windows98SE on it, just to see what >would happen; Win98 also would boot from the floppy but not the hard >drive. > > I then tried the "dd" command to overwrite the master boot record, as >suggested to me by others on this list, and reinstalled Mandrake Linux >8.2 - with the same result as before! > > At Siegbert Baude's suggestion, I booted into Linux with the boot >floppy, and ran "ls -l /dev/hda". The result was extremely weird, see >output of this command quoted below: >------------------------------ >Disk /dev/hda: 240 heads, 63 sectors, 557 cylinders >Units: Cylinders of 15120*512 bytes. > >Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System >/dev/hda1 * 1 557 4210888+ 5 Extended >Partition 1 has different physical/logical endings: > physical (524, 59,63) logical (556,239,63) > >Partition 1 does not end on cylinder boundary > physical(524,59,63) should be (524,239,3) > >/dev/hda2 9 44 265072+ 82 Linux swap >Partition 2 has different physical/logical beginnings (non-Linux?) > physical=(8,0,1) logical=(8,120,1) > >Partition 2 has different physical/logical endings > physical(40,254,63) logical(43,134,63) > >....similar errors for other partitions.... >-------------------------------- > >After this I tried booting from the Mandrake Linux CD and going into >rescue mode. Among the rescue tools was this statement: "Use lsparts to >list your partitions with types". > >Accordingly I opened a terminal and typed lsparts: > >#lsparts >hda2 258 MB, type <0x82> (linux swap) >hda5 62 MB, type <0x83> (ext2) >hda6 1,192 MB, type <0x83> (ext2) >hda5 1,1798 MB, type <0x83> (ext2) > >Which also looks very weird: no hda1 listed, my /boot partition shows up >as /hda5 instead, and what's even weirder, the filesystem types for the >three non-swap partitions show up as ext2, even though I created them >as ext3 (one of the journaling file systems for Linux). > >As a final attempt, at Siegbert Baude's suggestion, I erased all >partitions on the disk, created a single 400MB FAT32 (DOS) partition, >booted from a DOS boot disk, ran fdisk /mbr, and format c: /s, and then >attempted to get the PC to boot from this bootable DOS partition on the >hard drive. The system would not boot, displaying the "Disk Boot >failure, Insert system disk and press enter" message. > >I'm not sure what is going on, but I guess either the drive's partition >table and or MBR are truly messed up, or I have a bad drive on my hands >- maybe it died while I was transferring it from one PC to the other, >despite the anti-static pad and wrist-strap I used. > >I'm going to get another hard drive to get this system up, as I need to >get it working fairly quickly. Meantime, does anyone think my old 4.3 >Gig drive is still salvageable, or is it time to use it to help fill up >the local landfill? > >Thanks, >-John Carri Do I recall correctly that your boot order in BIOS was floppy, then CD- ROM, then hard drive? If that's correct, does setting the hard drive to the second option, before CD-ROM, make any difference? Jud To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message
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