From owner-freebsd-questions Wed Aug 7 23:46:01 1996 Return-Path: owner-questions Received: (from root@localhost) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.7.5/8.7.3) id XAA15152 for questions-outgoing; Wed, 7 Aug 1996 23:46:01 -0700 (PDT) Received: from ime.net (ime.net [204.97.248.4]) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.7.5/8.7.3) with ESMTP id XAA15144 for ; Wed, 7 Aug 1996 23:45:54 -0700 (PDT) Received: from kimiko.tcguy.net (buxton-4.ime.net [206.231.148.133]) by ime.net (8.7.4/8.6.12) with SMTP id CAA25431; Thu, 8 Aug 1996 02:45:42 -0400 (EDT) Message-ID: <32098D2D.5C5B@ime.net> Date: Thu, 08 Aug 1996 02:46:05 -0400 From: Gary Chrysler Reply-To: tcg@ime.net Organization: The Computer Guy X-Mailer: Mozilla 3.0b6 (Win95; I) MIME-Version: 1.0 To: "Jeffrey M. Metcalf" CC: questions@freebsd.org, metcalf@imagine.com, joseph_m._o'connor@ccgate1.bms.com Subject: Re: Repair boot sector of IDE hard drive References: <9607078394.AA839454178@ccgate0.bms.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: owner-questions@freebsd.org X-Loop: FreeBSD.org Precedence: bulk Jeffrey M. Metcalf wrote: > > Hello, > > In preparing an installation of FreeBSD 2.1, a collegue of mine and I > used DOS fdisk to partition an IDE hard drive and through one process > or another, managed to corrupt the boot sector. We do not have a > backup of the boot sector and would like to know if there is a way > to repair it. We know the geometry of the hard drive. It is a > 1272MB hard drive with a geometry of 2466 cyls, 16 heads, and > 63 sectors. Currently, DOS fdisk reports that the maximum size > of the hard drive available for a primary DOS partition is > 504MB, when this is clearly not the case. We want to correct the > boot sector so that DOS fdisk will recognize the 1272MB as the > maximum available size for a primary DOS partition. Dos can't read a disk that size without some sort of translation. ie: LBA, or others. (Ontrack Disk manager.. ) Were you running something like Ontrack Disk manager! I sure hope not! If you were it's a gonner! Thus any data is as well! If not, And your BIOS or IDE Interface card is translating, Then somehow they got hosed! Check the settings, Do a FDISK /MBR to fix the boot record. WARNING!! DO NOT USE FDISK /MBR IF USING A DISK MANAGER FOR TRANSLATION. As well as give up on installing FreeBSD untill you get some hardware to do the translation! ie: LBA IDE interface, (Improperly called EIDE) -Enjoy Gary ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Improve America's Knowledge... Share yours The Borg... Where minds meet (207) 929-3848