hidden disk geometry on Compaq Presario V2000

[Jerry McAllister]

On Thu, Oct 25, 2007 at 12:19:27AM -0700, perryh at pluto.rain.com wrote:

> Lorin Lund <gmail.com!lorin.lund at agora.rdrop.com> wrote:
> 
> > I have a Compaq Presario Notebook in the V2000 series.
> > I just replaced the hard drive because the original was getting
> > disk errors.
> >
> > I have a WD Scorpio 120 GB.  When I try to load FreeBSD I get an
> > error message when I get to the partition the disk stage.  It
> > says my disk geometry is wrong.  It says I need to use whatever
> > numbers my BIOS uses.  But my BIOS doesn't show the disk geometry
> > numbers anywhere I can see.  How can I proceed?  How can I find
> > out what disk geometry to use?

Is this just the usual whining it almost always does in fdisk?
If so, try just ignoring it.   I always get it putting out an
error message that the settings will not work with the geometry
but it always does.

If it is something else, then this comment doesn't apply - but 
try just going ahead.

////jerry

> 
> One method, which I think may be mentioned in the Handbook, is to
> boot the Windows install CD (that presumably came with the Presario)
> and use its fdisk to create a small partition.  You don't need to
> actually install Windows, just create a partition as if you were
> going to install it.  Then boot the FreeBSD CD and sysinstall will
> figure out the geometry from the Windows master boot record.
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