mounting a USB HDD

hirohitosan

hirohitosan

I want to mount a USB HDD and I need some assistance from you guys.

I plug the USB HDD and
Code: 
> dmesg
ugen4.2: <Sunplus Technology Co.,Ltd.> at usbus4
umass0: <Bulk Only Interface> on usbus4
umass0:  SCSI over Bulk-Only; quirks = 0x0000
umass0:0:0:-1: Attached to scbus0
da0 at umass-sim0 bus 0 target 0 lun 0
da0: <SAMSUNG HD501LJ > Fixed Direct Access SCSI-2 device
da0: 40.000MB/s transfers
da0: 476940MB (976773168 512 byte sectors: 255H 63S/T 60801C)
I think my HDD is da0
At this point can I try to format it?

I went to Handbook > Adding Disks > Using Slices
I want to format the HDD in fat32 and since I'm not familiar with commands I need some help
Code: 
# dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/da0 bs=1k count=1
# fdisk -BI da0
# bsdlabel -B -w da0s1 auto
# bsdlabel -e da0s1
# mkdir -p /1
# newfs /dev/da0s1e
# mount /dev/da0s1e /1
are these commands suitable for my da0 HDD?
where in that commands should I specify to format in fat32?

thanks!
 
newfs /dev/da0s1e
Click to expand...
This will format in ufs file system. Use newfs_msdos to create a new MS-DOS (FAT / FAT 32) file system.
Code: 
newfs_msdos /dev/ad1s1
Once formatted you can mount it:
Code: 
mkdir /mnt/usb
mount -t msdos /dev/da1s1 /mnt/usb

Replace ad1s1 with actual device names.
 
Thanks! I did
Code: 
# dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/da0 bs=1k count=1
1+0 records in
1+0 records out
1024 bytes transferred in 0.000477 secs (2147484 bytes/sec)

# fdisk -BI da0
******* Working on device /dev/da0 *******
fdisk: invalid fdisk partition table found
fdisk: Class not found
what does it mean that? should I continue with
# bsdlabel -B -w da1s1 ? or something is wrong?
I tried
Code: 
# fdisk /dev/da0
******* Working on device /dev/da0 *******
parameters extracted from in-core disklabel are:
cylinders=60801 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=60801 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 976768002 (476937 Meg), flag 80 (active)
	beg: cyl 0/ head 1/ sector 1;
	end: cyl 384/ 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>
That means there are 4 partitions on HDD?
 
You want the entire disk as fat32?
I would not advise it (limits on partition size)
Say it is 500g, you want the first partition 120G fat32
and the remainder ufs
make a file: say, da0.file

p 1 11 63 120G
p 2 165 * *

Be sure any data on the target disk is backed up

Format the first 120 as Fat32 and the remainder
as ufs2:


(I've done this maybe 3 times total, so take
this as not *absolutely* error-free)



Code: 
fdisk -f da0.file -v -u /dev/da0
Subsequently, you could bsdlabel and newfs the
second partition, later at your convenience.
 
hirohitosan: you could use sysinstall. I confess I'm a bit lazy on learning how to fdisk (using FreeBSD fdisk) and bsdlabel disks. I always use sysinstall and no problem so far :)

none
 
You can also consider using the GUID Partition Table (GPT). It supports greater partition sizes. The issue is that I don't believe it's supported in Windows XP, only XP x64 and up.

If you're interested in using GPT, you should check out the man pages for gpart.
 
The commands vivek posted should be enough. newfs_msdos should create the FAT filesystem on da0s1.

An MBR has always 4 slices/BIOS partitions no matter what, even if you have a huge slice encompassing the entire disk.

bsdlabel reads/writes a *BSD* (UFS) label which is obviously useless for a *FAT* partition.

Also, did you notice you used da0 with some commands and da1 with other commands? Be careful with these or someday you'll end up wiping all your data out.
 
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