# escape to loader prompt, ...to boot 2nd disk



## sidney6 (Jul 29, 2009)

so I press 6

unload kernel

boot /boot/kernel
   (no subdir, that's it)

but how do I tell it to boot the 2nd drive?

drive 1:  sata   ad10   (was ad4 on prior install, strange)
drive 2:   ide   ad1

can you delineate the boot path like 
                     boot /dev/ad1sX/boot/kernel?

Thanks,
Sid


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## SirDice (Jul 29, 2009)

You need to stop the loading before that. It needs to be stopped at the boot2 stage. As soon as the "boot:" message appears hit any key. This will give you a prompt like this:

```
>> FreeBSD/i386 BOOT
Default: 0:ad(0,a)/boot/loader
boot:
```

From there you should be able to boot a second harddisk.

See boot(8).


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## bb (Jul 29, 2009)

You can also do it in the loader prompt, which gives you a more interactive experience. Use lsdev to show disks, and select the a partition of the disk you want to boot with "set currdev". 


```
unload
lsdev
set currdev=disk1s1a
boot
```

There is also a readconf or read-conf command. This probably should be used before the boot command, but I'm not sure about that.


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## aragon (Jul 29, 2009)

But if you're going to be doing it often, you're better off installing boot0 (FreeBSD's boot manager).  See boot0cfg(8).


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