From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Tue Mar 13 18:07:50 2007 Return-Path: X-Original-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.freebsd.org [69.147.83.52]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id C1F9316A404 for ; Tue, 13 Mar 2007 18:07:50 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from cswiger@mac.com) Received: from mail-out3.apple.com (mail-out3.apple.com [17.254.13.22]) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 9C82113C459 for ; Tue, 13 Mar 2007 18:07:50 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from cswiger@mac.com) Received: from relay6.apple.com (relay6.apple.com [17.128.113.36]) by mail-out3.apple.com (8.13.8/8.13.8) with ESMTP id l2DI7lJQ017475; Tue, 13 Mar 2007 11:07:47 -0700 (PDT) Received: from relay6.apple.com (unknown [127.0.0.1]) by relay6.apple.com (Symantec Mail Security) with ESMTP id 9351A10B63; Tue, 13 Mar 2007 11:07:47 -0700 (PDT) X-AuditID: 11807124-9d420bb0000007df-de-45f6e873423f Received: from [17.214.13.96] (cswiger1.apple.com [17.214.13.96]) (using TLSv1 with cipher AES128-SHA (128/128 bits)) (No client certificate requested) by relay6.apple.com (Apple SCV relay) with ESMTP id 849FE10042; Tue, 13 Mar 2007 11:07:47 -0700 (PDT) In-Reply-To: <1C03BB1950F15F48B9E9654E0EFA42CA049EE7@bb04.bolsabilbao.local> References: <1C03BB1950F15F48B9E9654E0EFA42CA049EE7@bb04.bolsabilbao.local> Mime-Version: 1.0 (Apple Message framework v752.2) Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII; delsp=yes; format=flowed Message-Id: <662DFCD2-E6D7-4924-8FCC-A5CD53142215@mac.com> Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit From: Chuck Swiger Date: Tue, 13 Mar 2007 11:07:46 -0700 To: Aitor San Juan X-Mailer: Apple Mail (2.752.2) X-Brightmail-Tracker: AAAAAA== Cc: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Installing a second hard disk X-BeenThere: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: User questions List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Tue, 13 Mar 2007 18:07:50 -0000 Hi-- On Mar 13, 2007, at 10:05 AM, Aitor San Juan wrote: > I am trying to install a secondary hard disk in a Intel-based PC > with FreeBSD 5.4 > > This secondary disk's capacity is 250 Gb. When I enter sysintall > to try to format it and create a slice, FreeBSD says that the > geometry of disk is not correct. I, then, type in the values detected > by the BIOS as suggested, but FreeBSD still complains that those > are not valid. FreeBSD sees the new disk as a disk of approx. 131 GB. > > So my question is: where is the problem? Is it that FreeBSD is not > able to recognise such a big disk capacity? FreeBSD will recognize large disks, but your hardware itself needs to support what's known as LBA48 addressing to properly work with drives larger than 137.4 GB. Make sure that you've got the latest BIOS update for your MB installed, and try to make sure that the drive is configured to use LBA or "auto" access mode, rather than C/H/S. Also, you should ignore the warning about the geometry under these circumstances rather than entering a manual geometry...C/H/S mode is going to waste most of the available disk space, so you don't want to use it. First hit from google suggests a site here: http://www. 48bitlba.com/ with some tools...I haven't looked into them, but it looks like they have a utility to check your BIOS for LBA48 compatibility. -- -Chuck