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Date:      Sun, 22 Feb 2004 17:47:40 -0500
From:      "JJB" <Barbish3@adelphia.net>
To:        "David Markle" <davidmarkle@comcast.net>, <freebsd-questions@freebsd.org>
Subject:   RE: Wrong Geometry Disk Problem (Seagate ST3200822A - 200 GB)
Message-ID:  <MIEPLLIBMLEEABPDBIEGAEDKFMAA.Barbish3@adelphia.net>
In-Reply-To: <000501c3f96c$f37c0000$0b709697@elephant>

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The bios disk geometry bug has been an 5.2 release show stopper bug
for a lone time. Looks like they still have not corrected it. You
should submit an problem report containing much of the data you have
in this post. The more people who report this bug the higher up in
the severity list it moves and the sooner it will get addressed.
Keep in mind that the 5.x series are developer version releases and
not intended for production use. 5.x version should only be
installed on test machines.  4.9 is the last stable release and the
one people should be using if they want an stable operating system.

-----Original Message-----
From: owner-freebsd-questions@freebsd.org
[mailto:owner-freebsd-questions@freebsd.org]On Behalf Of David
Markle
Sent: Sunday, February 22, 2004 12:55 PM
To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org
Subject: Wrong Geometry Disk Problem (Seagate ST3200822A - 200 GB)

Hello all,

I have a problem installing FreeBSD 5.2.1 onto a Seagate Barracuda
ST3200822A - 200 GB ATA/100 Hard Drive.  Being a bit gun shy from a
previous geometry problem mis-install where I almost lost some
serious
data, I am reluctant to just "try" things until they work.  So here
goes
...

Using the Seagate disk tool, I created a 120 GB NTFS partition and a
200
MB FAT16 partition.  Installed Windows XP on the 120 GB part.  I
want to
put FreeBSD on the remaining space (~80 GB).

The Seagate HD utility states the following:

LBA Sectors are 390,721,968.
Standard 512 bytes per sector.

XBIOS Physical (and HD Spec Sheet from manufacture) (what BSD FDISK
Sees
too).
C    16383
H    16
S    63

BIOS
C    24321
H    255
S    63

When the FreeBSD CD boots and enters sysinstall, I get the usual
drive
geometry error.  I've extensively searched google for some sort of
method to calculate the true drive geometry with little success.

1. Is the above BIOS info correct ??
2. Ultimately, do I want the drive geometry to match up with the LBA
sectors ??
3. Can anyone point me towards something that correctly calculates
any
drive's TRUE geometry ??

Any help is greatly appreciated...

david markle
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