Crazy thing happened... HDD not recognized by bios after installing pfSense (NOT Detected, but "bootable").
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Hi everyone,
I'm installing pfsense on an old PC with the following specifications:
- HDD Sata ~120GB - Seagate model 'something' (if it is too important I can look up the full specs).
- CPU - Opteron 170 2Ghz 64 bit.
- 2GB RAM.
- Motherboard K8N Neo2 Platinum ( https://www.cnet.com/products/msi-k8n/ )
- 2x PATA Connectors (not in use).
- 4x SATA Connectors (2 in use).
- Another Sata HDD for Squid extra storage.
Basically, the thing goes like this.
- Bios shows IDE controllers as HDD0 and HDD1, and Sata controllers as: HDD2, HDD3, HDD4 and HDD5.
- Sata HDD (on bios HDD2) has windows
- At POST ... HDD2 (with windows) is detected, and booted from. Flawless (every time, not an issue).
- boot my USB CD-Rom, and detect disk, install pfSense.
- boot up again, and HDD2 is not detected during POST. Therefore I cannot boot from it.
- Changed a few times the bios settings, reinstalled pfsense, and ... nothing (I've been doing this for weeks, in my spare time, so I've tried a few things: changing sata cables, sata connectors, bios settings, reinstalling ... etc).
- Funny thing. Plugging my HDD to my external case, then, the USB, to the computer, and the pfsense disk, is detected and bootable.
Any help, suggestions, explantions, tutorials, or simply, pointing me on the right direction, would be greatly appreciated.
Yes, I have googled until my fingers bled (if there is info about it there, I cannot find the right combination of keywords, sorry).Thanks in advance!
PS: I haven't tried to install back windows, but I'm confident, the disk would be visible again on the Bios.
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Sounds like it's from the early SATA era when support was somewhat glitchy.
You seems to be mixing the terms disks and controllers there. I assume the controller doesn't vanish? And perhaps the disk itself does not vanish it just doesn't appear as a bootable device?
Try selecting (or deselecting) AHCI mode on that drive/controller on the BIOS.
Make sure you installed using MBR/BIOS boot sector. If the USB drive boots UEFI it may automatically install as UEFU only and then fail to see that as bootable. If so try installing as ZFS which will give you the option of choosing MBR.
Steve
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Hi there Steve,
thank you very much for your reply, I really appreciate it! ^_^You are right there, I was tired when I did the post, and I didn't think straight, and also I've been doing this all from memory.
With Sata controllers we have one channel per connector, when IDE used to have two (Master and Slave. I've completely forgot that when I posted, lol, too tired). But, the truth is the motherboard bios, has a, somehow, uniform way of showing the disks, so they all look almost the same (only when you click on them, shows you advance settings):
The controller, indeed, vanishes. I belive what it happens is this:
- Bios takes the PATA controller as primary controller (so it has to show its status)
- And the other controllers as secondary (less important, optative). So if the controller has no drive connected, it just doesn't show up (instead of showing "Sata1 = None" or similar).
In the picture, you could see all the controllers are named IDE, don't ask me why, but as far as I understand, 3rd, 4th, 5th and 6th, should appear as Sata.
Great points about:
- AHCI mode. How didn't think of that! :-O (I did have issues with that before). I'm not sure if the BIOS allows different modes and what modes, I had bios with Off/AHCI mode, some with Off/IDE/AHCI, others with IDE/AHCI/RAID, and variants like that. I'll try that, I think that could work.
- The mother**** MBR boot sector (pardon my french), I'll check that too (I've done it a few times in DOS, Win, Linux. But somehow I've felt that it was unnecessary for BSD/pfSense.
- UEFI. That one have not even crossed my mind.
I'll try all of those.
I'm very thankful! That system is for my parents who live in a rural area, and connection is sooo bad, pfsense will help them for sure.
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Looks like that's probably pre-UEFI so I doubt that's a factor.
Yeah there was some odd stuff when SATA first started to appear, like appearing as IDE devices...
I would look at the device modes available in the BIOS for the SATA ports.
Steve