I am under the process of installing FreeBSD on a x86 1GB HD machine with 128MB sd-ram memory. I have the current partitioning setup:

/ Root filesystem 118MB

swap swap space 128MB

/usr system & userfiles 967MB

I get an error when trying to install the base distro:

ERROR: Unable to write data to disk ad0!
Couldn't make filesystems properly Aborting

I understand the message, but don't know what to do. I have very limited knowledge of *nix. I have read the fbsd handbook and faq and still can't find a solution. can someone help!!??!

this may be an idiotic reply, but check your bios to make sure that "OS install mode" is ENABLED, and items like "boot record/mbr protection or mbr virus protection is DISABLED (if you have those items in your bios).

Have you wiped the drive clean of all existing partitions with partition magic or some utility before the OS install? I seem to remeber BSD using a rather unique partitioning scheme involving several logical partions inside a master physical partion, and sensitivities related to....

good luck.

I did all of this and still no luck. i also wiped my drive clean w/ fdisk of of the fbsd cd. anyone!!??

Make a scandisk or something and make sure that there isnt any physical errors on the disk.

Hmmm. The first time I tried installing FreeBSD it was in tandem with Linux, and I got a similar error. For reasons unknown, on the third attempt it went away and partitioned itself like it should have, and I haven't been able to reproduce the problem since.