Begin FreeBSD Installation - Fdisk
After choosing to perform a Standard Installation, a message appears informing you that you are about to enter fdisk. Please enter then select the hard drive where you want to install FreeBSD. My Inspiron laptop only has one hard drive so I go immediately into fdisk which looks something like below.
| Offset | Size(ST) | End | Name | PType | Desc | Subtype | Flag3 |
| | | | | | | | |
| 0 | 63 | 62 | - | 12 | unused | 0 | |
| 63 | 16386237 | 16386299 | ad2s1 | 4 | NTFS | 0 | > |
| 16386300 | 16369668 | 32756534 | - | 12 | unused | 0 | > |
| 32756535 | 6297480 | 38935321 | ad2s2 | 7 | fat | 0 | > |
| 38935322 | 1001 | 38936330 | - | 12 | unused | 0 | > |
I used the arrow key to highlight in blue the empty space I prepared before beginning this install. You can see above that the unused space I prepared is about the same size as my Windows XP (NTFS) partition. Next I created a partiton to install FreeBSD on by pressing the C key. In Unix/BSD partitions are called slices so pressing the C key tells fdisk to create a slice. (The essential directories made in the root of a Unix slice are called partitions).
I didn't need to specify a size when prompted because I wanted to use the entire empty space so I just pressed enter. Next the default -165 is okay so I pressed enter again. Finally I pressed Q to accept and finish.
Boot Manager -
When the Install Boot Manager Menu appeared, I selected the first option which is to install the FreeBSD Boot Manager. The FreeBSD Boot Manager provides a simple, and unobtrusive menu at boot time that allows me to boot either to my FreeBSD partition or my Windows XP partition.
Disklabel Editor -
After selecting the boot manager the Disklabel Editor comes up. This will further divide (partition) the slice already created for FreeBSD. Even with only 8 GB's, I have enough space to go with Auto Defaults so I made sure that the newly created slice ad2s3 was highlighted and I pressed the A key. To accept the new a, b, d, e, and f partitions I pressed the Q key.
