How to format a partition under FreeBSD

Discussion in 'General' started by magix_ch, Nov 6, 2010.

  1. magix_ch

    magix_ch New Member

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    Dear all,

    I want to format a partition under FreeBSD and change it to UFS filesystem. I searched the web for hours, including this forum, but even the "fdisk" man page is not clear at all, I really don't understand how to format a disk ! This looks so easy, it's really frustrating to loose 3 hours without succeeding !

    Any help would be clearly appreciated !

    Code:
    My current partition is :

fdisk /dev/da0
******* Working on device /dev/da0 *******
parameters extracted from in-core disklabel are:
cylinders=121601 heads=255 sectors/track=63 (16065 blks/cyl)

Figures below won't work with BIOS for partitions not in cyl 1
parameters to be used for BIOS calculations are:
cylinders=121601 heads=255 sectors/track=63 (16065 blks/cyl)

Media sector size is 512
Warning: BIOS sector numbering starts with sector 1
Information from DOS bootblock is:
The data for partition 1 is:
sysid 165 (0xa5),(FreeBSD/NetBSD/386BSD)
    start 63, size 1953520002 (953867 Meg), flag 80 (active)
    beg: cyl 0/ head 1/ sector 1;
    end: cyl 768/ head 254/ sector 63
The data for partition 2 is:
<UNUSED>
The data for partition 3 is:
<UNUSED>
The data for partition 4 is:
<UNUSED>
     
    magix_ch, Nov 6, 2010
    #1
  2. rusty

    rusty Well-Known Member

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    % man newfs
     
    rusty, Nov 6, 2010
    #2
  3. wblock@

    wblock@ Administrator Staff Member Administrator Moderator Developer

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    da0 is your drive. The first slice (partition) on that is called s1. fdisk(8) says you have that slice created, so /dev/da0s1 should be present. That's what you format with newfs(8):

    # newfs /dev/da0s1
     
    wblock@, Nov 6, 2010
    #3
  4. Beastie

    Beastie Daemon

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    Create 1 slice covering the entire disk: # fdisk -I /dev/devN
    Create 1 partition covering the entire slice: # bsdlabel -w devNs1
    Create a filesystem on the "a" partition (soft-updates enabled): # newfs -U /dev/devNs1a

    N.B. 1: If you want to create more than one slice, use a disk layout file (fdisk -f ...).
    N.B. 2: If you want to create more than one partition or change the existing label, either edit the label (bsdlabel -e) or "restore" it from a label file (bsdlabel -R ...).

    I am sure all this is well covered in the man pages and the handbook.
     
    Beastie, Nov 6, 2010
    #4
    sevenk and jstarcher thanked for this.
  5. magix_ch

    magix_ch New Member

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    Dear all,

    Thanks a lot for your answers...

    Beastie, I tried fdisk -I /dev/da0 but I got an error...
    But I did as as wblock suggested, I simply did :

    Code:
    # newfs /dev/da0s1
# mount -t ufs /dev/da0s1 /mnt/usbdisk
# ls -ltr /mnt/usbdisk
total 2
drwxrwxr-x  2 root  operator  512 Nov  6 18:11 .snap

    Thanks a lot for your help !

    I can continue working and start the backups I had to do...

    In fact we are only using Linux, normally, but I am using FreeNAS, which is quite good, but FreeBSD knowledge is obviously needed to mount USB drives ;-)))

    Best regards, and thanks again
     
    magix_ch, Nov 6, 2010
    #5
  6. sympton

    sympton New Member

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    I have similar problem, but i have several, are they slices then, in same 2tb hdd. How do i get rid of them ?
     
    sympton, Aug 1, 2011
    #6