Date: Mon, 14 Mar 2005 16:35:32 +0100 From: Alex de Kruijff <freebsd@akruijff.dds.nl> To: "Loren M. Lang" <lorenl@alzatex.com> Cc: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Incorrect geometry Message-ID: <20050314153532.GA825@Alex.lan> In-Reply-To: <20050313112025.GI18080@alzatex.com> References: <42326F4D.70008@daleco.biz> <200503120435.j2C4ZDr89213@fat_man.ascendency.net> <20050313112025.GI18080@alzatex.com>
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On Sun, Mar 13, 2005 at 03:20:25AM -0800, Loren M. Lang wrote: > On Fri, Mar 11, 2005 at 10:32:19PM -0600, Mike Loiterman wrote: > > Kevin Kinsey <mailto:kdk@daleco.biz> wrote: > > > Mike Loiterman wrote: > > >> When I do a new install of FreeBSD 5.3-RELEASE I get an error saying > > >> the drive geometry is incorrect. In the next screen, I put in the > > >> correct geometry, as reported by the BIOS, but after I hit q, I get > > >> the same error. > > >> > > >> The drive is a brand new 160 SATA Segate. The geometry FreeBSD > > >> suggests yield 152 Gigs, slices correctly and functions perfectly. > > >> I'm plannning on reformating anyway as this is only a test run, but > > >> do I need to be conserned about the error? > > > > > > Isn't the rest of the error message "using a more likely geometry?" > > > > > > IANAE, but I believe FBSD is simply stating that it doesn't find > > > the BIOS's numbers to be what it wants, so it's going to use > > > its own. This would explain the effect you see in the second > > > sentence above. > > > > > > As "yield", "slice", and "function" seems OK, I think "go for it!" > > > is perfectly good advice in this instance. I've seen the error > > > several times, too, and so far so good. > > > > It does say, "using a more likely geometry". The numbers are vastly > > different then what the BIOS says, but as I said, the capacity seems > > correct and it functions normally. > > > > I just don't want to have any trouble down the road... > > It shouldn't be a problem. Geometries nowdays aren't as useful as they > used to be and aren't really used much, LBA alleviates most of that. > The geometries that FreeBSD uses aren't the same that the drive > internally uses. In fact, using geometries has been the cause of an old > 8 gig limit on hard drives, a newer 137 gig limit, and an old boot > loader problem booting anything over cylinder 1023. > > As for the missing 8 gigs, that's probably because your hard drive > manufacture used SI units (10^3=1000) instead of the standard units > (2^10=1024) just to make the number look bigger. My 250 gig drive is > only 238 gig in reality. Back when I installed 5.2 I to got this error. I went along with it, but this seemed to cause the system to not be able to reboot. This is proberbly the worst that can happen to you. Somehow I was able to install it with the orignal setting. Afther this it would reboot. No when running FDISK Partition Editor from /stand/sysinstall it says: A geometry of 484521/16/63 for ad0 is incorrect. But when running fdisk off the shell it says: parameters extracted from in-core disklabel are: cylinders=484521 heads=16 sectors/track=63 (1008 blks/cyl) -- Alex Please copy the original recipients, otherwise I may not read your reply. WWW: http://www.kruijff.org/alex/FreeBSD/
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