Daniel Underwood wrote:
After unsuccessfully trying to reformat my external harddrive on my linux machine, I'm trying to reformat the disk in FreeBSD. Frankly, I just don't know how to do that. Please help me get the disk back to working order; I don't need to keep any data that is currently on the disk.The command $ /dev/da0
ITYM: fdisk /dev/da0
gives the following output: ******* Working on device /dev/da0 ******* parameters extracted from in-core disklabel are: cylinders=38913 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=38913 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 625137282 (305242 Meg), flag 80 (active) beg: cyl 0/ head 1/ sector 1; end: cyl 0/ 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>
This says that you have written a partition table onto the drive that indicates the whole disk is being used for FreeBSD. That's a good start if your intention is to use the disk dedicated for FreeBSD. The way the partition naming scheme works you should now have a /dev/da0s1 device file (indicating 'slice 1' or disk 'da0') In order to make the disk usable with FreeBSD, you need to follow something like these steps:* Use bsdlabel(8) to create BSD partitions on slice1. To write a default label:
# bsdlabel -w /dev/da0s1 Then to edit the default label and define the partitions you want, # bsdlabel -e da0s1 Edit mode will pop up an editor with the existing BSD partition table -- that's vi(1) by default but you can override it by setting the EDITOR environment variable. If your aim is to use this disk as one big filesystem for storing data then creating a 'd' partition covering all the available space would be appropriate. After saving the edited partition table you should now have a device file: /dev/da0s1d * Use newfs(8) to create a filesystem on the drive. I'd just leave it withthe default settings unless you know you're going to be using the disk for unusually large files or unusually many very small files.
newfs /dev/da0s1d * Mount the new filesystem to make it available to FreeBSD. Add a line like the following to /etc/fstab: /dev/da0s1d /data ufs rw 2 2 Then create the mount point: # mkdir -p /data and mount the drive: # mount /data The drive will be remounted automatically on system reboots and is expected to be permanently present. If you want to have the disk be removable, then read all about amd(8) and feel free to ask again here. Cheers, Matthew -- Dr Matthew J Seaman MA, D.Phil. 7 Priory Courtyard Flat 3 PGP: http://www.infracaninophile.co.uk/pgpkey Ramsgate Kent, CT11 9PW
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