FreeBSD 9.0 BOOT DISK FAILURE

[recondite]

I installed FreeBSD 9.0 AMD 64-bit today (my first time ever using FreeBSD) and the install seemed to work, i.e. I got no errors during the install and created one user account and a root account. I was able to login as root after the install (but not as the non-root user).

The problem is, when I rebooted the computer to boot off of the hard drive with the new install on it my BIOS just said "BOOT DISK FAILURE." There were no other error messages.

I am not sure if my BIOS recognizes the hard drive. I can't find the hard drive in the BIOS. But if that's really so, how could the install have worked?

 

[Beeblebrox]

If your BIOS does not recognize the HDD there's nothing FreeBSD (or any OS) can do.

Check your cables, connections, power supply. Check to see if the HDD is recognized on other PC (if it is, your cables in system1 are faulty). Read: http://forums.freebsd.org/showthread.php?t=30718
Clean your hardware: http://forums.freebsd.org/showthread.php?t=30612

how could the install have worked?

The HDD may have worked for a while but then stopped working...

 

[wblock@]

Depends on what is meant by "show". Sometimes the BIOS only shows IDE drives in the old-style setup screen. Try the BIOS boot menu.

 

[recondite]

"The HDD may have worked for a while but then stopped working... "

I bought a new HDD (actually a SSD) and all is fine. I suspect that it got a shock that killed it while I was connecting it to a different SATA port or cable to test my ports and cables. I shut the computer off but forgot to unplug it from the wall socket ... maybe that did it. The same port and cables now work fine with my SSD.

 

[recondite]

BTW ... thanks for the pointers!

 

[debguy]

I would bet you forgot, when you partitioned, to mark the active partition. Your drive is there, it's very, very likely still partitioned since as you said you installed.

Next thing BIOS does after detection is execute block 0 (it pokes into partition table for boot sector of any active partition (depending on block 0 code and UFS tables, excuse me) ) and loads the [ boot loader | kernel ] from there. Read about booting also. Read grub(1), I mean info grub (try grub95 - it's easier than grub2 if it works) and about loading a kernel image into memory and setting the CPU execution pointer to that address etc., and things like that.

 

[wblock@]

FreeBSD is not Linux. Although grub can be installed from ports, FreeBSD 9 is much more likely to use GPT. The installer handles partitioning, including making the drive bootable.