{"id":306,"date":"2010-09-05T12:56:34","date_gmt":"2010-09-05T12:56:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/poojanwagh.opalstacked.com\/techblog\/?p=306"},"modified":"2010-09-05T12:59:47","modified_gmt":"2010-09-05T12:59:47","slug":"installing-freebsd-from-usb-created-using-windows","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tech.poojanblog.com\/blog\/unix-linux\/installing-freebsd-from-usb-created-using-windows\/","title":{"rendered":"Installing FreeBSD from USB (created using Windows)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Be careful. You’re creating a FreeBSD boot image using Windows. It’s sometimes difficult to see which hard disk you’re writing to. See here:
\nWriting FreeBSD memstick.img to a USB drive in Windows \u00ab Koitsu’s Blog<\/a><\/p>\n

Download dd for Windows<\/i> here: chrysocome.net – download<\/a>. I chose beta 0.6.3. Unzip it, and take a look at the options:<\/p>\n
\ndd [bs=SIZE] [count=BLOCKS] [if=FILE] [of=FILE] [seek=BLOCKS] [skip=BLOCKS] [–s SIZE and BLOCKS may have one of the following suffix:
\n k = 1024
\n M = 1048576
\n G = 1073741824
\n default block size (bs) is 512 bytes
\n skip specifies the starting offset of the input file (if)
\n seek specifies the starting offset of the output file (of)
\n <\/code>\n

I had to run CMD and then dd as administrator (on Windows 7). Unless I did that, I couldn\u2019t see the NT Block Device Objects<\/em>. When I ran as administrator, i got the following (in addition to other outputs):<\/p>\n
\nNT Block Device Objects
\n \\\\?\\Device\\CdRom0
\n \t size is 2147483647 bytes
\n \\\\?\\Device\\CdRom1
\n \t size is 2147483647 bytes
\n \\\\?\\Device\\Harddisk0\\Partition0
\n \t link to \\\\?\\Device\\Harddisk0\\DR0
\n \t Fixed hard disk media. Block size = 512
\n \t size is 80000000000 bytes
\n \\\\?\\Device\\Harddisk0\\Partition1
\n \t link to \\\\?\\Device\\HarddiskVolume1
\n \\\\?\\Device\\Harddisk0\\Partition2
\n \t link to \\\\?\\Device\\HarddiskVolume2
\n \\\\?\\Device\\Harddisk1\\Partition0
\n \t link to \\\\?\\Device\\Harddisk1\\DR1
\n \t Fixed hard disk media. Block size = 512
\n \t size is 250000000000 bytes
\n \\\\?\\Device\\Harddisk1\\Partition1
\n \t link to \\\\?\\Device\\HarddiskVolume3
\n \\\\?\\Device\\Harddisk2\\Partition0
\n \t link to \\\\?\\Device\\Harddisk2\\DR2
\n \\\\?\\Device\\Harddisk2\\Partition1
\n \t link to \\\\?\\Device\\HarddiskVolume4
\n \\\\?\\Device\\Harddisk3\\Partition0
\n \t link to \\\\?\\Device\\Harddisk3\\DR6
\n \t Removable media other than floppy. Block size = 512
\n \t size is 4007657472 bytes
\n \\\\?\\Device\\Harddisk3\\Partition1
\n \t link to \\\\?\\Device\\HarddiskVolume8
\n \t Removable media other than floppy. Block size = 512
\n \t size is 25600000 bytes
\n <\/code>\n

Then, I ran the dd command. I got a file permission error problem. I went over to the Windows volume manager and formatted the drive I was interested in. Windows formatting of the drive failed, too. It created a partition with a size of 24MB. After that, though, I could run dd:<\/p>\n
\nD:\\Users\\Poojan\\Downloads\\dd-0.6beta3>dd bs=10240 if=..\\8.1-RELEASE-amd64-all\\FreeBSD-8.1-RELEASE-amd64-memstick.img of=\\\\?\\Device\\H
\n arddisk3\\Partition0 –progress
\n rawwrite dd for windows version 0.6beta3.
\n Written by John Newbigin <jn@it.swin.edu.au>
\n This program is covered by terms of the GPL Version 2.<\/p>\n

<\/code>\n

It has been running for quite a while. It\u2019s up to a count of 470,000,000 right now.<\/p>\n

After about 30 minutes, it\u2019s finally done:<\/p>\n D:\\Users\\Poojan\\Downloads\\dd-0.6beta3>dd bs=10240 if=..\\8.1-RELEASE-amd64-all\\FreeBSD-8.1-RELEASE-amd64-memstick.img of=\\\\?\\Device\\H
\narddisk3\\Partition0 –progress
\nrawwrite dd for windows version 0.6beta3.
\nWritten by John Newbigin <jn@it.swin.edu.au>
\nThis program is covered by terms of the GPL Version 2. <\/p>\n

1,075,384,320 105018+0 records in
\n105018+0 records out
\n<\/code>\n<\/p>\n