Return to BSD News archive
Path: sserve!newshost.anu.edu.au!harbinger.cc.monash.edu.au!msunews!agate!howland.reston.ans.net!swrinde!elroy.jpl.nasa.gov!lll-winken.llnl.gov!xanth.cs.odu.edu!violet!sturges From: sturges@violet.cs.odu.edu (Jonathan Sturges) Newsgroups: comp.os.386bsd.questions Subject: Re: Large IDE Hard drives with FreeBSD 2.0? Date: 10 Jan 1995 01:55:13 GMT Organization: Old Dominion University, Department of Computer Science Lines: 26 Message-ID: <3espe1$k0h@xanth.cs.odu.edu> References: <kientzleD23xyp.64G@netcom.com> <3erqn1$7p7@mercury.mcs.com> <kientzleD25GE7.EDx@netcom.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: violet.cs.odu.edu X-Newsreader: TIN [version 1.2 PL2] I was really worried about this problem myself. A month ago, I bought a WD Caviar 850MB drive. But, I have a 2.5-yr.-old generic ISA IDE/multi-io card; clearly, this IDE card predates E-IDE. So, I wasn't expecting it to work. But it was really easy... 1) I boot DOS (from either floppy or another HD) and fdisk'd a DOS partition. I chose 200 MB. As long as you're under that 484-MB size (as was posted previously) you're OK. Leave the rest of the drive unpartioned. 2) Install FreeBSD from the CD-ROM. It will pick up on the fact that the rest of the drive is available, and will use it. Voila! That's all there is to it. Of course, if you try to use the whole drive for DOS, it stops at 504 MB. Anyway, I had no problem with my cheapo IDE card. The drive is brand new, manufactured 2 months ago. I wouldn't worry too much about your hardware. And BTW, I put the honest disk geometry in the BIOS setup; I didn't play with it. In fact, my BIOS correctly auto-identified the big drive's parameters... -Jonathan jonathan@cc.odu.edu