From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Fri Jan 9 09:05:30 2004 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 532CF16A4CE for ; Fri, 9 Jan 2004 09:05:30 -0800 (PST) Received: from heron.mail.pas.earthlink.net (heron.mail.pas.earthlink.net [207.217.120.189]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id E090243D54 for ; Fri, 9 Jan 2004 09:05:25 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from algould@datawok.com) Received: from 22-15.lctv-b4.cablelynx.com ([24.204.22.15] helo=yoda.datawok.com) by heron.mail.pas.earthlink.net with asmtp (TLSv1:RC4-MD5:128) (Exim 3.33 #1) id 1Af04V-0002Lp-00; Fri, 09 Jan 2004 09:05:19 -0800 From: "Andrew L. Gould" To: Konrad Scorciapino , freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Date: Fri, 9 Jan 2004 11:06:18 -0600 User-Agent: KMail/1.5.4 References: <20040109143634.42e655bc.konrad@scorciapino.org> In-Reply-To: <20040109143634.42e655bc.konrad@scorciapino.org> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Disposition: inline Message-Id: <200401091106.18854.algould@datawok.com> X-ELNK-Trace: ee791d459e3d6817d780f4a490ca69564776905774d2ac4b7e127dcf7738782405b2042565c55867350badd9bab72f9c350badd9bab72f9c350badd9bab72f9c Subject: Re: Booting from a hard disk not supported by the BIOS X-BeenThere: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.1 Precedence: list List-Id: User questions List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Fri, 09 Jan 2004 17:05:30 -0000 On Friday 09 January 2004 10:36 am, Konrad Scorciapino wrote: > Hi, > > I've got an old computer with 2 hard disks. The first has 2GB and FreeBSD > installed; the second, 20GB and windows installed. However, the computer's > BIOS is quite old and doesn't detect the second hard disk, so I cannot boot > from it. > > So how can I do that? I've tried installing FreeBSD's boot manager, but > apparently it gets the devices' information from BIOS, since the only hard > disk that appears in the boot list is the first one. Or perhaps there is a > file somewhere to edit and add all information. > > Anyway, any advice would be appreciated. > > Thanks. First, try to find a BIOS update for the motherboard that will allow for larger hard drives. If that's not available, Maxtor has a free download, MaxBlast 3, that will create a BIOS overlay that will allow the BIOS to see the larger hard drive. http://www.maxtor.com/en/support/downloads/maxblast3.htm 1. You can use MaxBlast with non-Maxtor hard drives. It's not supported; but I've used it on a Fujitsu laptop hdd. 2. Although the BIOS will see the larger hard drive, MaxBlast will want to prep the hard drive for installation of Windows (fat32 or ntfs). I have not tried to install FreeBSD via the BIOS overlay. If you try and succeed, definitely let us know! Andrew Gould