Installing FreeBSD 4.7 on large disk shared with Windows

[R. W.]

On Sunday 22 August 2004 13:49, John Michaels wrote:
> I have obtained Sams Teach yourself FreeBSD which includes a Cd with
> FreeBSD 4.7 which the authors suggest is installed as you can then
> 'follow along'  the book.
>
> I have a machine with 2 Disks (60 Gb and 30Gb respectively) which
> already has Windows Me (and Slackware). Because of Windows not always
> behaving itself, I have split the 60Gb into (10Gb and 20Gb) for
> windows and 5Gb for slackware. These are primary partitions. An
> extended partition holds swap and /home logical partitions. Half of
> the remaining space of 10Gb  was to be allocated to FreeBSD.
>
> I started installation, went into the  'fdisk' to create a 'slice' of
> 5000M for FreeBSD. This was done. The next screen asked about
> bootmanagers, I asked for it and then the next screen gave the
> following message:
>
> Disk slicing warning
> Max one 'fat' allowed as child of whole
>
> When I hit enter, no other option available, the installation returns
> me to the disk partitioning screen. This cycle repeats.  The only way
> out is by cancelling the installation.
>
> I have more than one fat partition to reduce chances of Windows
> crashing and spending hours in scandisk checking the various disks.
> Surely with the large disks now available, my problem is quite
> common? Am I right in assuming that FreeBSD does not allow more than
> one  'FAT' partition on any disk? Why?

I don't think there is any such restriction

But I don't understand what you have done here.

You can have 4 primary partitions, or 3 primaries and one extended. If 
you have windows on two primary partitions and slackware on a primary 
and extended partition then you have no partition left to put FreeBSD 
on.