freebsd 5.1 beta 2 partition table corruption

Previously I had reported a hard disk geometry problem with the freebsd installer in 5.1 beta 2. It turns out there is more to the problem. The FreeBSD installer also corrupts the partition table on the fixed disk. I did not realize this until I rebooted into Windows 98 and ran Partition Magic 7.0 which detects the problem immediately and corrects it. This is not more than an inconvenience for me since I own PM7 but, there are probably many people out there who don't have this software and can't detect the problem, let alone fix it.

I suspect that this problem stems simply from the large size of the fixed disk drive and the fact that I'm installing FreeBSD far into the drive, somewhere around the 50GB - 59GB mark. Having recently purchased this drive, I tried re-installing earlier Release versions of FreeBSD ( 5.0, 4.8, 4.7 ). They all have the same problem with disk geometry.

I don't know at what release FreeBSD broke through the old "large disk" 8GB barrier problem, that prevented installation of the OS on a partition above the 8GB mark but, i suspect my problem is connected to the large size of the fixed disk.

By the way, if you're looking for a new hard drive this one is outstanding. Its very quiet ( under 3db ), and reasonably cool ( operates around 72 degrees F ) and fairly quick.

repeat of related message:

x86 P3 whitebox

Hard disk:
Seagate IDE
Model Number:ST380011A
Capacity:80 GB
Speed:7200 rpm
Interface:Ultra ATA/100

The FreeBSD 5.1 BETA 2 installer ( custom "partition" ) has trouble determining my hard disk geometry. The installer reads the disk as 
155061/16/63
then reports this as unlikely and guesses
9729/255/63
but the BIOS states that the geometry is
1024/255/63

once the geometry is set correctly, the install works ( with the often mentioned krb5 problem ). 




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