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Path: sserve!newshost.anu.edu.au!harbinger.cc.monash.edu.au!bunyip.cc.uq.oz.au!munnari.oz.au!quagga.ru.ac.za!ucthpx!sar-lbr.ee.uct.ac.za!PGOLDA From: PGOLDA@eleceng.uct.ac.za (Pete Golda) Newsgroups: comp.os.386bsd.questions Subject: Q: FreeBSD and crappy IDE cards Date: Mon, 13 Mar 1995 11:05:45 GMT Organization: University of Cape Town Lines: 33 Message-ID: <PGOLDA.214.795092745@eleceng.uct.ac.za> NNTP-Posting-Host: sar-lbr.ee.uct.ac.za Hi, I'm sure this question has been asked thousands of times, so please point me to a FAQ or something... I have an 850 meg Conner hard drive in my IBM PC compatible, and I have a standard IDE controller card. The hard disk came with a "Disk Manager" from Ontrack ( I'm not sure about the name.. ). This disk manager modifies the Master Boot Record by adding a driver that allows my standard IDE card to "see" the whole hard drive ( IDE cards only see up to +/- 500 meg ). This is all working fine. So now I have a 400 meg DOS partition, and 450 meg just sitting there unassigned to anything. I want to install FreeBSD on this 450 meg. Before doing so I got the INSTALL documentation for FreeBSD in which I found a reference to "Disk Manager" programs and such. Basically it seems that I cannot install FreeBSD because I have this driver for my IDE card. Is there ANY way I can install FreeBSD on my system ? If not, would I have to buy an EIDE ( Extended IDE ) card, which requires no software driver ? If I attempted to install FreeBSD just to see if it works anyway, is the data in my DOS partition in danger of being deleted ? Thanks for your help, Pete.