Solved Trying to understand partitioning on FreeBSD

Hello,

I returned to install FreeBSD, the system works very well, and everything in my desktop works. I could not even understand 100% how partitions work, I have a second internal hard drive and have UFS formatted with a label BSD, when I do gpart show ada1 I get this:
Code:
=>  63  1953525105  ada1  MBR  (932G)
  63  8190  - free -  (4.0M)
  8253  1953513387  1  freebsd  (932G)
  1953521640  3528  - free -  (1.7M)


A simple "slice", but I thought that "slices" were "extended partitions", then... why the partition is ada1s1 and not ada1s1a?

I read the documentation but I do not quite understand it.

Thanks.
 
What slices are is the concept of slicing up a device, such as a disk drive. You can have one hard disk and the ability to divide that up into four slices or, as Windows calls them, "partitions". So a hard drive might be named ada0 and it's first slice will be ada0s1.

FreeBSD's advantage is the ability, then, to extend those slices by slicing up the slices into what we call partitions. Thus, ada0s1a is the first hard drive, ada0, the first slice, s1, and the first partition "a".

What's neat about all this is the ability to spread a filesystem across multiple devices and multiple servers in multiple locations but still refer to /usr as /usr.
 
I did read the documentation, but what is the exactly different of slices and normal partitions?

According to the FreeBSD Handbook:
Disks in FreeBSD are divided into slices, referred to in Windows® as partitions, which are numbered from 1 to 4. These are then divided into partitions, which contain file systems, and are labeled using letters.
 
And before you say anything about the confusing naming conventions, slices existed long before MS-DOS started calling them partitions ;)

Also note this is only for MBR partitioning. With GPT it's only "partitions" and it's called that on Windows, Linux and BSD. A lot less confusing :D
 
Thanks everyone, one last question. Is it possible to partition without creating slices? That is, ada0a, ada0b, etc ... In my second hdd I have only one partition that: ada1s1.
 
Thanks everyone, one last question , Is it possible to partition without creating slices ? That is, ada0a , ada0b etc ... In my second hdd i have only one partition that: ada1s1.

It's possible but it's not recommended. The method is known as "dangerously dedicated" partitioning where you create only the BSD partitioning scheme directly on the disk without slices. It still works but the installer has no support for it. The main problem with is that telling apart a disk that has a dangerously dedicated partitioning vs. a disk with the standard MBR partitioning requires some serious hackery. A disk with just the BSD partitioning still has the MBR block and MBR partition table in it if the disk is bootable because the MBR standard requires it.
 
It's possible but it's not recommended. The method is known as "dangerously dedicated" partitioning where you create only the BSD partitioning scheme directly on the disk without slices. It still works but the installer has no support for it. The main problem with is that telling apart a disk that has a dangerously dedicated partitioning vs. a disk with the standard MBR partitioning requires some serious hackery. A disk with just the BSD partitioning still has the MBR block and MBR partition table in it if the disk is bootable because the MBR standard requires it.

Ok, I understand now, thanks very much.
 
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