Booting from a hard disk not supported by the BIOS

[Andrew L. Gould]

On Friday 09 January 2004 10:36 am, Konrad Scorciapino wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I've got an old computer with 2 hard disks. The first has 2GB and FreeBSD
> installed; the second, 20GB and windows installed. However, the computer's
> BIOS is quite old and doesn't detect the second hard disk, so I cannot boot
> from it.
>
> So how can I do that? I've tried installing FreeBSD's boot manager, but
> apparently it gets the devices' information from BIOS, since the only hard
> disk that appears in the boot list is the first one. Or perhaps there is a
> file somewhere to edit and add all information.
>
> Anyway, any advice would be appreciated.
>
> Thanks.

First, try to find a BIOS update for the motherboard that will allow for 
larger hard drives.  If that's not available, Maxtor has a free download, 
MaxBlast 3, that will create a BIOS overlay that will allow the BIOS to see 
the larger hard drive.

http://www.maxtor.com/en/support/downloads/maxblast3.htm

1. You can use MaxBlast with non-Maxtor hard drives.  It's not supported; but 
I've used it on a Fujitsu laptop hdd.

2. Although the BIOS will see the larger hard drive, MaxBlast will want to 
prep the hard drive for installation of Windows (fat32 or ntfs).  I have not 
tried to install FreeBSD via the BIOS overlay.  If you try and succeed, 
definitely let us know!

Andrew Gould