Date: Mon, 15 Mar 1999 11:17:28 -0500 From: The Classiest Man Alive <ksmm@threespace.com> To: "G. Adam Stanislav" <zen@buddhist.com> Cc: freebsd-newbies@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Horror story Message-ID: <199903151630.LAA27529@geek.grf.ov.com> In-Reply-To: <3.0.6.32.19990312184205.008eabe0@mail.bfm.org>
next in thread | previous in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help
My experience with Ontrack Disk Manager has been that it's only good for -creating- partitions on the large IDE hard drives, and only FAT partitions at that. Even then, it will only allow your primary DOS installation to recognize those partitions; it won't allow you to boot from them. Being able to boot from partitions near the end of such a big disk require BIOS support to remap the drive to fewer cylinders (e.g., LBA mode). No OS or utility can work around this limitation. Check with your motherboard manufacturer to see if your BIOS is upgradable. Many modern boards can be easily flash upgraded with a small download form the manufacturer's web site. --K.S. PS -- Some of these utilities restore their special boot sector as their first activity on startup, which is why it can be difficult to rid your system of them at times. At 07:42 PM 3/12/99 , G. Adam Stanislav wrote: >Hello, folks, > >I do not know what else to call it but a horror story. > >Yesterday I received my new 10.2 Gig hard drive. I ordered it because I was >running FreeBSD on a 60 Meg slice I cut out of my Windows disk. > >Well, my BIOS CMOS would not accept 10.2 Gig. I called the manufacturer's >tech support, and explained I needed a @ Gig slice for Windows, and the >rest for FreeBSD. "For what?" Unix, you know, FreeBSD. > >"Oh, no problem, you need Ontrack Disk Manager. That will let you do that. >Download it from our web site." > >I did as advised. It turned out Disk Manager is a brain dead piece of >software. It partitioned the disk into 5 2 Gig partitions, and OVEROTE my >MBR!!! Form then on, I was unable to log back on to my small FreeBSD system. > >So, I uninstalled Disk Manager and deleted all partitions but the first >one. No good. My MBR was still coming up with Disk Manager! > >I logged onto FreeBSD.org and read the section on how to restore my MBR. >The software said it restored my MBR successfully. Rejoiced, I rebooted, >just to get the Disk Manager again. > >I finally decided to say good bye to everything I had on my FreeBSD and to >install version 3.1 from scratch. This morning, I started the ftp download. > >Nine hours later, I was disconnected from my ISP (it has happened before, >and they always blamed it on me, so I did not even bother calling them). > >The install program happily continued with the system setup. adding users, >configuring fonts, etc. Then I rebooted. Got as far as "boot:". > >>From then on, no matter what I typed in (such as wd1, wd1s2a, or just plain >enter), the "boot:" thing just kept coming. > >I got this wonderful hard disk, I got the most powerful OS in the world on >it, but I cannot use it. > >Any suggestions??? > >Adam >--- >Want to design your own web counter? >Get GCL 2.10 from http://www.whizkidtech.net/gcl/ > > >To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org >with "unsubscribe freebsd-newbies" in the body of the message > To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-newbies" in the body of the message
Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?199903151630.LAA27529>