*BSD News Article 77154


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From: Ken Bigelow <kbigelow@www.play-hookey.com>
Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc
Subject: Re: FreeBSD on > 500mb HDDs
Date: Thu, 29 Aug 1996 18:15:20 -0700
Organization: Erol's Internet Service
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Chris Rehbein wrote:
> 
> For some reason, (I am a FreeBSD newbie) the installation for FreeBSD
> changes my FDISK partitioned 1.7gb Quantum HDD from one boot-level 426mb
> partition (for FreeBSD) and one extended DOS partition with 3 equal
> partitions with the remaining disk space to one 24 mb FreeBSD partition
> and leaves the rest of the HDD (only 480mb!!!) unavailable.  Is this
> caused by an incompatibility with FreeBSD and my DTC EIDE hard card, or
> is it just a FreeBSD shortcoming?  I'm running Win95 on a C drive,
> running (trying, FreeBSD won't install naturally on 24mb) FreeBSD on D:
> bootable partitioned drive.  Also, if someone can point me to a FAQ or
> something that assists in repartitioning a hard drive with an existing
> FAT partition for FreeBSD, that would be very helpful...
> CRehbein

It looks to me as if your ROM BIOS and motherboard are old enough that
they are still limited to 504 MB on the hard drive (1023 cyls x 16 heads
x 63 sectors). FreeBSD can still use the drive so long as the "/"
partition is within the 504 MB limit, but a number of OSes can't without
special drivers. You may have to upgrade it to a newer version.

It is also possible that using a hard card instead of a more "standard"
drive configuration may have something to do with it -- I've never tried
any hardcards, but I have working dual-OS systems with drives up to 2.1
GB, and the only problems I've encountered have been of my own making.
-- 

Ken

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