What is a disklabel and why do I need one?
The BSD partition table supplements the DOS partition table. The entries in this table are meaningful to BSD. There are eight partitions in the BSD partition table, and they are normally lettered from a: to h:. This supplemental partition table is often referred to as the ‘disklabel’. There have been many good articles in both the mailing lists and the newsgroups about disk labeling and partitioning. I have included a few of them here. NOTE: This information has not really changed since 386BSD 0.1. Some of the specifics may be out of date (the use of the d: partition, for example) but the steps and information are still pertinent. Phil Nelson (pail@cs.wu.edu) writes: I have installed several disks that have > 1024 cylinders and have used both DOS and NetBSD. What has worked for me EVERY TIME is the following: a) Tell the BIOS that you have 1023 cylinders and the correct geometry for heads and sectors. (This will limit your DOS part of the disk to be LESS than the first 1023 cylinders
