Date: Mon, 3 May 2004 23:03:25 +0930 From: Malcolm Kay <malcolm.kay@internode.on.net> To: Carsten Zimmermann <cz@aegisnet.biz>, freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Partitioning fails due to drive geometry inconsistency Message-ID: <200405032303.25731.malcolm.kay@internode.on.net> In-Reply-To: <20040503090312.GB3018@iluvatar.bbk.hh.aegisnet.de> References: <20040503090312.GB3018@iluvatar.bbk.hh.aegisnet.de>
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On Monday 03 May 2004 18:33, Carsten Zimmermann wrote: > Hello list. > > I know this had been discussed quite often, but none of the posting > google offered worked out for me. Please (B)Cc: me as I am not on the list. > > I have a Western Digital WDC WD400AB-00CMB0 40 GB IDE drive hooked in as > pri slave in my system and wish to install FreeBSD on it. This is not my > first install, but it won't work this time (using 5.2.1-R): > > I try to partition the drive with fdisk during the installation process. > Everytime I hit "w" to write the changes, the program catches ``sig 11'' > (segfault?). Curious thing is: I was able to delete partions but I > cannot create new ones. I tried every option concerning bootsector (boot > mngr, std mbr, none) and the error occures every time. > > When I enter the fdisk tool it tells me that the drive geometry > "778545/16/63" is wrong. I don't have a clue where it gets that value. This set of figures would correspond to a disk of 401GB (k=1000) or 374GB (k=1024) -- Clearly not a 40GB drive. > The BIOS detects the geometry as 19158/16/255. The auto-corrected value This set corresponds to 40.0Gb (k=1000) so seems to be an acceptable set of numbers except that I understand that the seectors per track can't exceed 63 so the this set is unsuitable. In LBA mode it is not necessary that the specified geometry is the same as the physical reality. It is common to set the heads and sectors to maximum values 255/63. > is 4865/255/63 which equals the BIOS-setting when access mode is set to > LBA manually. When I enter the geometry manually with "g", it still Which corresponds to this auto-corrected value and again calculates to 40.0GB (k=1000). This looks like the best geometry to use. > mourns the value 19158/16/255 is not correct and again falls back to > those LBA values. > Again the 255 value is too large. Don't try to set your own geometry; go with the auto-corrected value. Malcolm
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