PC-BSD can't see my hard drives

[Tinman55]

I ordered a copy of PC-BSD 8.0 posted to me because of download restrictions. It arrived today and I was keen to get started with it, but when I got to the part of the install where it asks which hard drive to install on the only one it picked up was my externall backup drive and the usb card reader (read as 4 drives).
I am running Vista and XP on my computer in dual boot, and have left a 256GB partition to install BSD, with the intention of eventually going all BSD.But all partitions are NTFS is that the problem?
My system is ASUS M3A78 Pro Mother board
AMD Phenom x4 @ 2600 MHz chip
6144 MB Ram
3x WD hard drives 320, 500 and 500 GB
NVidia GE force 7300 le Video card
I have used PC-BSD ver 1.5 but only as the only os on a sandbox.
Any help would be appreciated

[marcelman]

It's better to leave empty the partition where you want to install, without file system so the solution it's simply erase from windows that one that you want to use with PCBSD and when install automatically i'll find it, its better that the erased partition be the last one of your HD, because the MBR anyway always FBSD or PCBSD have problems with the measurements of the HDs, also using dedicated HD

[Tinman55]

Thanks for replying. When you say leave the formating blank, do you mean unformated altogether? or do I need to format the disk with a linux style partition? I have GParted so I could do iether. Also when you said PCBSD has problems with disk size, what problems? can you elaborate?
Thanks

[NaX]

It sounds like you are considering a Dual Boot. My I suggest you have a look at this wiki page for info on that. My suggestion is EasyBCD and not using the FreeBSD boot manager when trying to setup a dual boot with Windows.

http://wiki.pcbsd.org/index.php/DualBooting

In terms of the install, FreeBSD needs its own empty primary partition. For making changes to your hard disks I suggest using a Linux Live CD and using something like GParted. The least risky is to give BSD its own empty hard disk.

I also suggest before anything else backing up critical data on your other OS's. Even thou what you are trying to do sounds reasonably standard and straight forward, things can and do sometimes go wrong.

REF:
SystemRescueCd
http://www.sysresccd.org/Main_Page
GParted Live
http://gparted.sourceforge.net/livecd.php

[Tinman55]

Thank you NaX for your detailed reply. I am already using easybsd to control my dual boot with vista and xp so it should be fairly simple to add PC-BSD to the list. I will try formatting the partition I want to place PCBSD on with a blank format and see if it then picks up the hard drive. putting it on it's own hard drive is not an option as I have lots of partitions all used for different things, having said that, if this doesn't work I will spend the time to clear the smaller hd for it. I will let you know how I go when I get around to doing it.

[Tinman55]

Hi all, well I have just deleted the partition I want to install PCBSD on and had another go at installation, but unfortunatley with the same result, that is it just can't see my hard drives. The only drives that show up are my USB hard drive and my USB card reader, which shows up as 4 drives. So I would really appreciate some help here as to what to do next. Every other time I have installed versions of PCBSD on computers it has picked up existing partitions with no problems, but this time no joy at all. Has anyone else encountered this problem?
Thanks in advance.

[NaX]

Maybe its a bios/hardware issue. Maybe its an IDE/SCSI issue or a DMA issue.

Can you give us some system info.

I found this on another forum post

Your problem is the SATA to IDE bridge for that old PATA Port.
Disabel it in the BIOS so FreeBSD and the other system will boot correctly.

My BIOS called it: Extra IDE Port Enable/Disable (or something like that)

REF:
http://forums.freebsd.org/showthread.php?t=3478

[Tinman55]

Thanks again NaX for your reply, I went into the bios and found the legacy IDE section and turned it off and tried to install once more, with the same result, so I thought I would run PCBSD as a live OS and see if it could see my drives , but alas nothing. I have some info on my system which I will try to copy and paste here to see if that helps in finding a solution.
General Information :
Manufacturer : ASUSTeK Computer INC. (Asus)
Product : M3A78 PRO
Version : Rev 1.xx
Serial Number : MS1C86BLUH02107
Support MP : Yes,
4 CPU(s)
Version MPS : 1.4

Bios
General Information :
Manufacturer : American Megatrends Inc.
Version : 0202
Date : 04 June 2008
Address : 0xF000 on 1024 KB
Copyright : (C)2006 American Megatrends, Inc
Motherboard ID : 64-0202-000001-00101111-060408-RS780-P0020000
DMI Version : 2.5

Chipset
General Information :
NorthBridge : AMD K10 Bridge
SouthBridge : ATI Technologies Inc

NorthBridge Information :
Architecture : Northbridge
Manufacturer : AMD
Revision : 00
Bus Speed : 200.5 MHz
HT Link : 2005.2 MHz
HyperTransport Clock : 2000 MHz
Upstream : 16-bit
Downstream : 16-bit
HTT max. Support : 2000 MHz
RAM max. Support : DDR2 (800 MHz)

General Information :
Disk Controller : ATI Technologies Inc ATI Technologies Inc
Disk Controller : ATI Technologies Inc ATI Technologies Inc
Drive Controller Features #1 :
Mode : IDE
AHCI : Yes
IDE Legacy : No
NCQ : No
Port Multiplier : No

Drive Controller Features #2 :
Mode : IDE
AHCI : No
I tried switching from IDE to AHCI in the controller, but just kept getting bluescreened.
Hope this helps, if not please let me know what information would be of help in solving this puzzle.
Thank you.

[NaX]

This sounds like it might be the same problem you having.

If it is you going to need to do a bios upgrade.

http://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/free ... 10767.html

[Tinman55]

Hi all and thanks for the info NaX. I updated my bios to the latest version and reset the type of disk controler to AHCI instead if IDE, That made Vista bluescreen with the message that it couldn't find the hard drive, but I thought OH well I will press on and try PCBSD. But still no joy at all.
The message that comes up in setup when it is trying to find the hard drives is
" Attempt to query device size failed : not ready, medium not present"
This comes up for all the disks exept my usb hard drive and my usb printer, which it sees as a hard drive?
I hope this information helps, as I like what I have seen of PCBSD so far.
Now I have changed the disk controler back to IDE so Vista will work.