# dual boot multiple drives



## tmeisenh (Jul 3, 2009)

I'm trying to dualboot FreeBSD with an existing XP install.  I have three disk drives.
IDE - disk 1 - windows
IDE - disk 2 - freebsd stroage
SATA - disk 3 - freebsd root, storage.

I installed freebsd onto the sata drive (disk 3) and everything went ok.  I installed the freebsd boot manager onto both disk 1 and disk 3.  When the system powers on, I see three choices: F1 for windows (which works), F2 which points to disk 2 (does nothing) and F3 which I assume tries to boot the sata drive 3.  However all it does is dump out a repeating number sign (#).

Any questions or any easier steps to dual boot across multiple drives?  Do I need to set partitions active on any drive/partition OTHER than my windows drive?  I had this working years ago with the freebsd boot loader but I can't remember how I did it.


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## user_not_expert (Jul 3, 2009)

Can you tell the BIOS to boot the SATA drive first, (just as a diagnostic test) if so what happens?


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## jb_fvwm2 (Jul 4, 2009)

I'd maybe try the following steps:
put GAG on a CDR, test it booting each 1. 3. disk;
which probably still would not boot;
put in a live bsd CD, boot and find the device number of disk3,
their filesystems, put that in fstab in disk3, (if the 
live cd will allow it, some won't), reboot with the GAG
cd and see if 3.bsd will boot.  
................
either that or a modification of it.  Ignoring bios issues.  
..................
Just because I'd try it doesn't make it the solution, either...


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