From owner-freebsd-questions Fri Aug 4 2:40:43 2000 Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from kirk.dsl.visi.com (kirk.dsl.visi.com [209.98.248.172]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id BFA2A37B5C5 for ; Fri, 4 Aug 2000 02:40:39 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from dgl@visi.com) Received: from localhost (dgl@localhost) by kirk.dsl.visi.com (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id EAA10121 for ; Fri, 4 Aug 2000 04:40:38 -0500 (CDT) (envelope-from dgl@visi.com) X-Authentication-Warning: kirk.dsl.visi.com: dgl owned process doing -bs Date: Fri, 4 Aug 2000 04:40:37 -0500 (CDT) From: Doug Lee To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Is `fdisk /mbr' REQUIRED to reuse DD drives? Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG I have a 4GB IDE drive formerly "dangerously dedicated" as a FreeBSD drive but which now lives in a Win95 box. I moved the drive from the FreeBSD box to the Windows box, then ran fdisk (it took a couple of runs and CMOS updates to get the Windows box to recognize the full 4GB), then format, sys (I forgot about format /s), and finally copied all my files to it under Windows to preserve long names. It all works..... except that it won't boot. I can boot from a customized floppy that hops straight into Win95 on C:, but if I try to boot the C drive, I get something roughly like "bank 0 fp bank 1 fp boot error" and a machine that waits for a better idea of where to start. (I'm not home right now, so I'm having to reproduce the error message from my faulty memory :-) I have two theories: (1) My BIOS can't handle booting from the drive, and (2) I have to run fdisk/mbr to fix this. Before I tinker with the drive (which is now full of data), I thought I'd ask those of you who have converted DD drives to more standard configurations... Is there a chance that running fdisk/mbr would help here, or would it be a waste of time by now? -- Doug Lee dgl@visi.com http://www.visi.com/~dgl To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message