Installing Pfsense on disk issues

Kukri

Hello

Im encountering an issue during the process of:

#Executing '/sbin/bsdlabel -B -r -w ad2s1 auto'

The log follows with

#bsdlabel: write /dev/ad2s1: Input/output error
#Exit Status:1

The machine is running with:
motherboard: A7V8X-LA (Kelut)
Processor: Amd Athlon XP 2600+
Memory: 512MB / PC2700 DDR SDRAM x1
Harddrive: wdd400 40gb Pata Hdd
Nic: Intel PRO/1000 GT Desktop Adapter, PCI (PWLA8391GTBLK) x2

I am using the:
pfSense-LiveCD-2.1.3-RELEASE-i386-20140501-1552

I Have tried multiple solutions found in this forum:

Low level formatting with Windows Disk Management (no problem)
formatting the disk via the disks custom install (no problem)
changing the Access mode of the hdd to CHS and LBA from auto (no problem)
running the following in the live cd's shell
# dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/ad0 bs=8k count=16
# fdisk -I ad0
( I get errors :
#dd: unknown operand of
#fdisk: unable to get correct path for ad0: no such file or directory)

I am sorry, if i missed a small detail and will do any of the methods i tried again as I am new to Pfsense and havent got any experience with FreeBSD

Kukri

Update, after doing a multitude of trial and error (which will be listed at the bottom), i got it past the installation,through the reboot and on to configuring pf sense on my main computer. The last method i tried was placing the hard-drive into slave mode while having the disk reader as the master on the first channel of the motherboards pata controller. 1*

I feel really stupid and confused on why or how this worked. I do not believe that it has anything to do with the jumpers on the devices (master, slave) nor do i believe that the access mode (LBA) has anything do do with it (maybe) because I tried multiple combinations of everything.

on a side note: I switched installation dvds and burnt myself a copy of pfsense 2.1.4 i386, which did not also worked untill I did the change above.

The changes that i made were (not in chronological order, also the ones i can remember)

reformatting and partitioning the drive via FreeBSD 8.3 i386 dvd (Errors when installing freebsd but partition and formats remained)
switching: Pata cables, sata and pata Harddrive, cd/dvd burners, memory
turning off: ps/2 mouse, onboard 1394, Serial ports, Parralel ports ,usb legacy mode support(which was turned back on)
installing windows xp(which the machine Had), and updating Bios as well as partitioning the disk
attempted to use pfsense live cd shell and try to learn fdisk to get a hint as to what the problem was

edit: 1* as opposed to having both hard drive and disk reader be the master of their respective pata channels : hdd = channel 2 , Disk = channel 1