On Fri, Jan 09, 2009 at 06:59:11PM +0000, the.phule wrote:
> Evening All,
>
> I just purchased a new external USB harddrive (maxtor 500Gb Basics)
> and plugging in into my 4.4 box I have got stuck it isnt formatted to
> a FAT32 format it's ntfs....[snip]
>
>
> ...Can I just use disclabel to delete the i entry and add an "MSDOS"
> format type?
There are *two* partition tables to consider. The MBR partition table,
which you can display with the fdisk(8) program, and the OpenBSD partition
table, known as the disklabel.
OpenBSD pays attention to both. Windows systems will only look at the
MBR partition table. If you intend to use this disk with foreign systems
such as Windows, as well as OpenBSD, you should consider both. Note:
when OpenBSD does not find a disklabel, it will use the MBR table to
craft a virtual disklabel, and will lay out foreign MBR partitions in that
virtual disklabel beginning with disklabel partition "i".
In order to create a valid FAT32 partition that a foreign system can see,
you will have to edit the MBR partition table with fdisk, and format as
FAT32 with newfs_msdos(8). It would probably be easier, if you are
unfamiliar with these tasks, to plug the USB drive into a Windows machine
and "reformat" it there as FAT32, which will take care of both the MBR
partition and the filesystem itself.
If you are *only* planning to use the device with OpenBSD, then you do not
need FAT32 at all. Just OpenBSD FFS filesystem(s). The process you
would use with be to first recreate an MBR partition table that has a
single MBR partition, spanning the whole drive, reserved for OpenBSD,
with something like:
# fdisk -i sd0
then create your intended disklabel partitions with:
# disklabel -E sd0
Then format OpenBSD partition(s) with newfs(8), e.g.:
# newfs rsd0a
Then add the partition to your fstab(5) table, or mount manually, or
use hotplugd(8), as desired.
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