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From: Chris Brennan <xaero@xaerolimit.net>
Date: Tue, 28 Dec 2010 11:02:45 -0500
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To: Michael Powell <nightrecon@hotmail.com>
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Subject: Re: a new hard-drive in a 2y/o laptop
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On Tue, Dec 28, 2010 at 2:23 AM, Michael Powell <nightrecon@hotmail.com>wrote:

> Try zeroing out the mbr:
>
> Boot a LiveFS CD, then at a root prompt do:
>
> sysctl kern.geom.debugflags=16  and:
>
> dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/adx oseek=1 bs=512 count=1
>
> where x equals your drive number. This will zero out any old MBR.
>
> I have seen this exact error before, and this is what took care of it.
>
> -Mike
>

Mike,

Thanks for that little tip, I tried it this morning and it hung for about 30
second w/ no cd/hd activity, then it resumed w/ a beep, it printed some
garbage on the console, the only ledgeable was the following

[..]
<GARBAGE>Invalid partition tableError loading operating systemMissing
operating system<GARBAGE><GARBAGE><GARBAGE>1+0 records in
1+0 records out
512 bytes transferred in 2.712151 secs (189 bytes/sec)
[..]

Restarting the install process, again accepting defaults, I am again
presented with

[..]
'Unable to find device node for /dev/ad4s1b in dev!
The creation of filesystems will be aborted.'
<OK>
[..]

My question is this now, could this be the fact that this is a really large
drive and the bios is 'freaking' out (for lack of a better term) and not
properly presenting the disk to the system? While I don't think this is
something to consider, something in the back of my head suggests it is. The
disk is a different spindle-speed then the old one.

[..]
250G -> 5400RPM
750G -> 7200RPM
[..]

maybe a (stab in the dark here) bus translation issue, disk is giving the
bus too much information? *shrug I dunno, I'm babeling now and I don't have
an obnoxious fish in my ear :(.