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Disk geometry problem
Installing FreeBSD Posted by Mike N. on Sunday February 09, @03:21AM
from the trying-to-abandon-m$ dept.
Upon installation of FreeBSD 5.0, the disk partitioner tells me the detected geometry is incorrect (155061/16/63) and chooses a wrong geometry (9729/255/63). In fact, the geometry is 38309/16/255, according to the BIOS autodetection and the BIOS boot screen (checked three times). The disk is a Seagate 80GB model. It already contains a 20GB NTFS boot partition, some NTFS logical drives and 10GB unused space which I intended to install FreeBSD on. The disk partitioner won't let me enter the correct geometry values, it complains the 38309/16/255 is invalid. But that's what my BIOS says! How can I get around this? I'm afraid the installer would kill other partitions if I'd let him go on with his own guessed (incorrect) geometry.

Thanks in advance for any help.


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    The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them.
    ( Add a Reply )

    Re: Disk geometry problem
    by ZeSolo on Tuesday March 25, @01:49PM
    I've exactly the same problem with my Fujitsu 40GB.
    I googled around a little bit but there doesn't seem to be any solution. And I'm not willing to complete sysinstall with a wrong geometry setting.
    Why isn't FreeBSD able to detect the right settings if Windows 2000 and Linux 2.4.20 have absolutley no problems?
    [ Add a Reply to this ]
    Re: Disk geometry problem
    by Hao C. on Monday May 26, @05:12AM
    I had the same problem with FreeBSD 4.8 Release and a new western digital 120G. I checked the Bios info and typed it in using the "G" command, couldn't get rid of the error message. So I let sysinstall went ahead anyway. Everything went fine except the formated drive only had 100G, which I am not willing to accept.
    [ Add a Reply to this ]
    Re: Disk geometry problem
    by Chris on Wednesday July 02, @04:05PM
    I get the same problem with 4.6 and a WD800. Basicly, FreeBSD ignores whatever is in the bios and sets the geometry to 155061/16/63 on bootup. Sysinstall then errors and resets to 9729/255/63 which works, but does not use the full disk. Manually setting the geometry to the correct value (16383/16/63) will use the full disk, but FreeBSD will still revert back to 155061/16/63 when it boots.
    [ Add a Reply to this ]
    • Re: Disk geometry problem
      by Mark Moses on Monday August 11, @11:19AM
      I have the same problem with a seagate 40GB disk. I tried once to complete setup which made it absolutly impossible to boot again into my windows xp installation...

      still wondering...
      [ Reply to this ]
    Re: Disk geometry problem
    by Bob on Monday September 01, @06:37PM
    I have the same problem with my 40Gb Fujitsu and FreeBSD 5.0.

    Sysinstall says the probed reading of the geometry is obviously wrong and sets it to something else. When I set it to what my BIOS says, it tells me that is obviously wrong too. When I tell it what pfdisk reports it as, sysinstall is happy with the values and carries on. The installation seems to go fine, but when I try to boot my machine, Boot Manager (I have XP on the drive that's causing problems, and I'm trying to install FreeBSD on a second, smaller drive that is not causing problems) offers me:

    F1: ??
    F5: disk 1

    If I hit F5 I am offered

    F1: disk 0
    F5: freebsd

    I hit F5 and then get a boot: prompt from FreeBSD telling me that /boot/loader and /kernel are not available.

    Sometimes a bad install like this will kill XP's ability to load properly. I got right up to the login screen before XP froze, the first time. But booting the XP installation CD and going all through the install seems to restore XP without loss of personal files. (You will have to run Windows Update for a good ninety minutes, though.)

    So I don't know what to try next. I even swapped the IDE cables around in my box because originally the HDDs were on the secondary channel, but I still get the same problem, so that cannot have been the cause.

    Anyone found a way around this obstacle?
    ---
    Bob
    [ Add a Reply to this ]
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