Date: Tue, 17 Feb 1998 08:01:58 +1030 From: Greg Lehey <grog@lemis.com> To: "Paul T. Root" <proot@horton.iaces.com> Cc: kevstanton@hotmail.com, freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Your OS, questions Message-ID: <19980217080158.45141@freebie.lemis.com> In-Reply-To: <199802161415.IAA25108@horton.iaces.com>; from Paul T. Root on Mon, Feb 16, 1998 at 08:15:57AM -0600 References: <19980214134258.40789@freebie.lemis.com> <199802161415.IAA25108@horton.iaces.com>
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On Mon, 16 February 1998 at 8:15:57 -0600, Paul T. Root wrote: > In a previous message, Greg Lehey said: >> On Fri, 13 February 1998 at 19:03:48 -0800, Kevin Stanton wrote: >>> To whom it may concern: >>> >>> Hello. I'm interested in learning UNIX, and someone told me >>> that your version of UNIX was free and a great OS to learn on. What I >>> was wondering is, I have a PII-300MHz, with 128 megs of ECC SDRAM. I >>> have an 8.4 gigabyte EIDE UltraATA harddrive, and it's partitioned into >>> a C: D: E: & F: drives. The E: drive is completely empty, and I was >>> wondering if I could run FreeBSD on that E: drive, and keep my C:, D: & >>> F: intact for Windows 95 B use. >> >> Almost. The trouble is that most PCs can only boot from the first two >> disks (this is a BIOS limitation, not a FreeBSD limitation). This >> would translate to the Microsoft partition C: or D:. >> >> I'd suggest that you move the contents of your Microsoft partion D: to >> E:, and install FreeBSD on D:. Hopefully they're close enough to the >> same size not to be a problem. >> >> Greg > > I think he means that he has 2 BIOS partitions (primary and extended) and has > the extended partition split into 3 drives (D:, E: and F:). Thanks, yes. Somebody else also pointed this out to me. It seems that Microsoft won't recognize more than one primary partition. > And the answer is no, you can't put FreeBSD on your E: drive. FreeBSD must > be in its own BIOS partition. What you'd need to do is backup D: and F:, > and repartion so that you have: > > 1 DOS (C:) > 2 FreeBSD > 3 Extended DOS (D: and F: - will become D: and E:) > 4 Unused Yes, that sounds reasonable. If I understand the interaction between the BIOS and Microsoft correctly, it's important to put the FreeBSD partition first or second, since that's the sequence in which the BIOS will recognize the disks: It will see the Microsoft C: drive as C:, the FreeBSD partition as D:, and nothing at all. Microsoft will look at the disks again after booting, and will ignore the FreeBSD partition (wrong partition type) and find the extended partition. Greg To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message
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