formatting disk for FreeBSD : Detecting IDE Primary Master ... [Press F4 to skip]

[Nerius Landys]

>
> However, when I reboot (without floppies) I still get the message
> >  Detecting  IDE  Primary  Master ...  [Press F4 to skip]
> >
> > and when I go into BIOS , it still doesn't detect  the IDE disk.
> >
> > How do I format disk so BIOS  recognises it ?
>
>
> I'm pretty sure this isn't a matter of what bits and bytes are on your
> hard disk. (It's not an issue of formatting.)  Someone correct me if I'm
> wrong someone.  It seems that the issue is a hardware issue.  For example,
> try a different jumper configuration on the back of the physical hard
> drive.  Also, there are probably two places on the IDE cable where you can
> plug in your hard drive.  Try plugging your hard drive to the very end IDE
> connector (not the middle one) and try setting the hard drive jumper
> configuration to "master".  This might help.  Just an idea.
>
>
A couple of other thoughts.  In the BIOS settings you can probably set the
order of devices it will try to boot from.  Set your hard drive as the first
device, or at least make sure it's in the list of devices to boot.

Once you get the BIOS to recognize your drive and try to boot from it, if it
still ain't booting it probably means that you didn't write anything to the
hard disk MBR during install.  You didn't install a boot manager or a simple
boot program into the MBR.