GEOM_PART: Integrity check failed (ada2, MBR)

[Ronald F. Guilmette]

In message <20140517162513.GG43976 at funkthat.com>, 
John-Mark Gurney <jmg at funkthat.com> wrote:

>Ronald F. Guilmette wrote this message on Fri, May 16, 2014 at 12:38 -0700:
>> 
>> In message <20140516130346.GB43976 at funkthat.com>, 
>> John-Mark Gurney <jmg at funkthat.com> wrote:
>> >Wow, I just noticed this...  FreeBSD is only seeing it as a 31MB drive
>> >instead of a 1TB drive...  This is probably the problem...
>> 
>> OHHHHH!  Wow!  Yea.  That is MESSED UP!
>> ...

>Can you get a memstick of 11-CURRENT from:
>https://www.freebsd.org/snapshots/
>and get the output of:
>camcontrol identify ada2 -v
>from a boot of the memstick?  mav thinks that it might be an issue w/
>HPA, and this should help track it down.

I don't think that there is any need anymore for me to do the above
steps.  I am now convinced that I do know what has caused this rather
remarkable (and remarkably annoying) problem.

I had forgotten all about this, until now, but there is apparently a
known problem where older (pre-2010) Gigabyte motherboards will in
fact create a Host Protected Area (HPA) on the ``first'' ATA drive
in a given system, *and* that in cases where the drive is 1TB or larger,
the result will be a drive that self-identifies as being only 31 (or 32)
megabytes big.  (You can google for this known problem and you'll find a
_lot_ of references to it.)

The specific 1 TB drive on which I experienced this problem had been
working just fine with no problems whatsoever on another system that I
have here.  However I made the mistake of trying to put it into my #2
desktop system, which is based on a vintage 2006 Gigabyte motherboard.

I now firmly believe that this caused the specific form of corruption
that now afflicts the drive in question.

I already have sought, and have already been provided with the steps
that I need to undertake in order to "repair" the apparent capacity of
the drive in question, and I am already making plans to replace my
*&^%$#@ Gigabyte motherboard with something different with all due
haste.

I will *never* purchase another Gigabyte motherboard as long as I live!
(In addition to this extraordinarily problem, it also has had a number
of obscure problems booting various things from USB-attached mass
storage.)

Anyway, my thanks to all involved for their time and effort considering
my unfortunate plight.  Who knew that just connecting an otherwise
flawless hard drive to a specific kind of motherboard would instantly
render it effectively brain dead?


Regards,
rfg