Possible ? - clean install but preserve one filesystem ?

[Richard Shea]

Hi - I'm having problems upgrading 4.4 -> 4.8 but it's got to work by
Monday so I'm looking at all my options.

Before things went bad I backed up off the machine /etc and
/usr/local/etc. Also took notes about file systems etc.

I have one file system on its own IDE drive that I would like to preserve
and have available after the upgrade.

My question is this : if I act as if the machine had never had FreeBSD on
it at all will a normal install in some way go digging around on that IDE
drive  and trash the contents ? 

It doesn't seem likely but it's important that it's safe. 

If not I guess I could re-install from scratch and only once the install
was complete would I then tell FreeBSD about the IDE drive ? It's a long
time since I did a clean install and I've sort of forgotten the degree to
which FreeBSD probes for disks.

Thanks 

Richard Shea.

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