Re: Hard drive geometry
From: David Lord (snews_at_lordynet.demon.co.uk)
Date: 07/14/04
- Next message: Vlad D. Markov: "Re: portsdb, portupgrade not quite working."
- Previous message: Gary: "Issues with direct DSL"
- In reply to: Vincent Schmid: "Re: Hard drive geometry"
- Next in thread: Vincent Schmid: "Re: Hard drive geometry"
- Reply: Vincent Schmid: "Re: Hard drive geometry"
- Messages sorted by: [ date ] [ thread ] [ subject ] [ author ]
Date: Wed, 14 Jul 2004 17:51:36 +0000 (GMT)
On Wednesday, in article <2ll2t6Fe36thU1@uni-berlin.de>
prenom.nom@econophone.ch "Vincent Schmid" wrote:
> "jpd" <read_the_sig@do.not.spam.it> a écrit dans le message de
> news:1089755081.152592@ente.ipberlin.com...
> > On 2004-07-13, Vincent Schmid <prenom.nom@econophone.ch> wrote:
> > > Today I have installed a second hard drive in order to write images of
> the
> > > sytem on it. After the installation, I booted again with the FreeBSD CD
> in
> > > order to make a fresh install.
> > >
> > > Now the installation program tells me that "A Geometry of 79428/16/63
> for
> > > ad0 is incorrect". (and it changes it to 4983/255/63)
> >
> > You installed the second drive as slave of the first (same controller)
>
> No, I used the second controler.
>
>
> > and thereby changing the IDE access wossname (CHS/LBA/xxx)[1] so all your
> > geometry are down the drain. And/or you accidentally hit the ``detect
> > drives'' option in the bios so it now lists details instead of ``auto''
> > for all drives. Right?
>
> Neither : the bios does not let me detect or change anything about the
> geometry of IDE hard drives, I can only "look" (This is an old Compaq
> Deskpro)
>
> There is a option called "IDE drive translation" which can be switched on or
> off, but this makes no difference.
>
>
> >
> >
> > > I thought that it was related to the insertion of the new hard drive, so
> I
> > > removed it and retried. But from now on, I can't get rid of this
> message.
> >
> > Change the CHS/LBA/xxx setting back to what it was, or just to ``auto'',
> > and you should be ok again.
>
> I do not know what it was, the bios doesn't show it (as I said there are
> dashes instead of numbers) and there is no "auto" feature... Is it possible
> that something went written somewhere on the drive ?
Normally after the first fdisk when the mbr is written to disk, the
geometry information is included. This is used by the system bios
during bootup.
On reinstalling FreeBSD it's possible to skip the fdisk stage and
go on to edit disklabel and I've found doing this always causes
problems. Going into fdisk is first required and correct geometry
should really be picked up from hdd. I've noticed on some systems
there's a conflict as to geometry returned by two different methods
used, so manual selection is required. I'd try the 4983/255/63
settings first. Don't confirm this unless a reasonable partition
table is displayed showing the existing partitions at correct
locations. With a blank disk it's anyones guess as to what will have
been used, I'd guess the 16 hds version reported by the drive. This
is no problem for FreeBSD but other operating systems rely on bios
to locate partition boundary and there can be constraints on maximum
value for number of cylinders.
I consider it essential to save partition, disklabel and mount point
(fstab) information for all systems I install, partly to avoid this
sort of problem, but also to be used to assist recovery if the mbr
should be overwritten.
David
-- The Reply-To: is valid for at least 30 days after posting date David Lord - david@lordynet.demon.co.uk
- Next message: Vlad D. Markov: "Re: portsdb, portupgrade not quite working."
- Previous message: Gary: "Issues with direct DSL"
- In reply to: Vincent Schmid: "Re: Hard drive geometry"
- Next in thread: Vincent Schmid: "Re: Hard drive geometry"
- Reply: Vincent Schmid: "Re: Hard drive geometry"
- Messages sorted by: [ date ] [ thread ] [ subject ] [ author ]
Relevant Pages
|
|
