1995-09-18 16:53:06 +00:00
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If you are going to actually install some portion of FreeBSD on a
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drive then PLEASE BE VERY CERTAIN that the Geometry reported in the
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1995-12-07 10:34:59 +00:00
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Partition Editor is the correct one for your drive and controller
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combination!
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1995-09-18 16:53:06 +00:00
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IDE drives often have a certain geometry set during the PC BIOS setup,
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or (in the case of larger IDE drives) have their geometry "remapped"
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by either the IDE controller or a special boot-sector translation
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utility such as that by OnTrack Systems. In these cases, knowing the
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correct geometry gets even more complicated as it's not something you
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can easily tell by looking at the drive or the PC BIOS setup. The
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best way of verifying that your geometry is being correctly calculated
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in such situations is to boot DOS (from the hard disk, not a floppy!)
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and run the ``pfdisk'' utility provided in the tools/ subdirectory of
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the FreeBSD CDROM or FTP site. It will report the geometry that DOS
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sees, which is generally the correct one.
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If you have no DOS partition sharing the disk at all, then you may
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find that you have better luck with Geometry detection if you create a
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very small DOS partition first, before installing FreeBSD. Once
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FreeBSD is installed you can always delete it again if you need the
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space.
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It's actually not a bad idea (believe it or not) to have a small bootable
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DOS partition on your FreeBSD machine anyway: Should the machine become
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unstable or exhibit strange behavior at some point in the future (which
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is not uncommon behavior for PC hardware!) you can then at least use
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DOS for installing and running one of the commercially available system
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diagnostic utilities.
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