From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Thu Jan 6 09:54:25 2011 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.freebsd.org [IPv6:2001:4f8:fff6::34]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id D0BB9106564A for ; Thu, 6 Jan 2011 09:54:25 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from amvandemore@gmail.com) Received: from mail-fx0-f54.google.com (mail-fx0-f54.google.com [209.85.161.54]) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 54F158FC08 for ; Thu, 6 Jan 2011 09:54:25 +0000 (UTC) Received: by fxm16 with SMTP id 16so15752702fxm.13 for ; Thu, 06 Jan 2011 01:54:24 -0800 (PST) DKIM-Signature: v=1; a=rsa-sha256; c=relaxed/relaxed; d=gmail.com; s=gamma; h=domainkey-signature:mime-version:received:received:in-reply-to :references:date:message-id:subject:from:to:cc:content-type; bh=lCTr8bviJExRqjGYWNigLqhGwe21l2jyl1O/lBE3Ofk=; b=wLVbluxyuIUySKckhNg3eQZcEMyr7K2+KtS/tXtBzR8HVLUYO6DaPdaBpv3taxeaYq UVOZ+ub7eechupR0eN05vwTg2xLTCIsDYdTbK0fSrMUgMetFgFg9uqqk4USiqCzsqf7k hHHJ7gFpqMm0mjj3IKn9FES7jVRKXKKoW8Poo= DomainKey-Signature: a=rsa-sha1; c=nofws; d=gmail.com; s=gamma; h=mime-version:in-reply-to:references:date:message-id:subject:from:to :cc:content-type; b=QZJwP7Oy5Tqw4VE9jWnQdhleuZnfX4dMCTrsPzVzqb6Y0e1m1/ux3DH6v5XajEwPDo mX9c6V0flyrcMSNZOi8xrikCQLJMLvT6ivYkU3yNCLctJPK6xDW2gb9pamecR2zxA2i9 Yizdhq6eScEfkP6Ku4qGyIxjcTSYNrFNCrGFM= MIME-Version: 1.0 Received: by 10.223.87.72 with SMTP id v8mr5003582fal.70.1294307664463; Thu, 06 Jan 2011 01:54:24 -0800 (PST) Received: by 10.223.114.4 with HTTP; Thu, 6 Jan 2011 01:54:24 -0800 (PST) In-Reply-To: <20110106160720.B49334@sola.nimnet.asn.au> References: <20101229120038.3DFB0106591A@hub.freebsd.org> <20101230133126.O36121@sola.nimnet.asn.au> <20101231105353.S36121@sola.nimnet.asn.au> <20110102102255.00004f57@unknown> <20110102230702.N49334@sola.nimnet.asn.au> <20110103022619.O49334@sola.nimnet.asn.au> <20110104143245.P49334@sola.nimnet.asn.au> <20110105152725.U49334@sola.nimnet.asn.au> <20110106160720.B49334@sola.nimnet.asn.au> Date: Thu, 6 Jan 2011 03:54:24 -0600 Message-ID: From: Adam Vande More To: Ian Smith Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 X-Content-Filtered-By: Mailman/MimeDel 2.1.5 Cc: Bruce Cran , FreeBSD Questions , Chris Brennan Subject: Re: a new hard-drive in a 2y/o laptop X-BeenThere: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: User questions List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Thu, 06 Jan 2011 09:54:25 -0000 On Thu, Jan 6, 2011 at 3:06 AM, Ian Smith wrote > Your dd of the first 71 sectors looked right, MBR looks ok, sectors 1-62 > are zeroes, boot1 and boot2 from sector 63-70 seem normal, after you > used 'W' to write anyway; can't say for sure that the bsdlabel is ok, > but see no reason to suppose otherwise. What says 'bsdlabel ad4s1' > while you've still got one? > This is a pretty easy problem to replicate if you are pressing W, and that "issue" has existed for quite some time. If you press W then Q at sysinstall fdisk then attempt to force write disklabel screens you will get the error. Just setup the slices and partitions as you want and let sysinstall handle the writing of information. There is a big warning box that says not to use force write except under certain conditions and this is not one of them. If you google the error message in the OP, the first result is: http://forums.freebsd.org/showthread.php?t=1675 Failing that, I can't see other than a hardware issue, unless somehow > sysinstall is broken and you may do better manually running fdisk and > bsdlabel and newfs per Handbook and manuals? > This doesn't say hardware error to me at all, at least not a disk hardware issue. The message was present across two disks, and if there truly is a problem writing to the media a complete zeroing of the drive would be apparent then. While we're getting people to look at sysinstall and the auto resizing, it would be nice to get the "Unable to create the partition. Too big?" issue resolved. You can trigger this by auto-sizing the partitions, deleting a couple and recreating one that a different size than one autosize suggested. Then create the second partion using the auto-populated value in partition size box. Typically run into this when making / a little bigger on amd64 installs by borrowing some space from /usr. It's very tedious to slowly decrease the size of the second partition in your attempts to create it if you're trying to utilize the whole drive. -- Adam Vande More