Re: USB external drive size limitations?
I faced the exact same problem recently with my 250GB iOmega external harddisk with a single FAT32 partition which I needed mounted on my FreeBSD 6.0 Release system. I needed this to be mounted "rw", so the MSDOSFS_LARGE option was no help. After some cajoling, iomega folks confirmed that partitioning the disk into multiple partitions should present no issues (although for some reason best known to themselves, on their support website they explicitly discourage users doing this). To cut the long story short, I chose to partition the 256GB disk into 2 128GB FAT32 partitions. Both the partitions show up (as /dev/da*) and mount "rw" nicely on FreeBSD (and also on Windoze as usual). To be on the safe side, I moved the data back and forth between my fixed harddisks and the external disk before and after repartitioning the external HDD, but iomega said that using content-preserving repartitioning software such as partitionmagic should be possible to use without any issues on their disk. Chandan JHorne wrote: Well im fairly certain that my filesystem has less than a million files, its mostly just large .iso files from my ftp server. I can defiantly quickly check it out against a windows computer before I plug it back in the next time im at my colo. ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to "[EMAIL PROTECTED]"
RE: USB external drive size limitations?
Well im fairly certain that my filesystem has less than a million files, its mostly just large .iso files from my ftp server. I can defiantly quickly check it out against a windows computer before I plug it back in the next time im at my colo. Ok, so since im about to recompile and force myself to reboot, other than the options SMP that I already added in, is there anything else I really need to look at before I do it again? What about the scheduler? Is the ULE over 4BSD really a big deal? The article I read said that SMP machines really prefer it, is that the case? If there is anything else you would have wanted to teach the last new person you instructed in the finer points of kernel compiling, but didn't... now's your chance!!! cheers, jonathan -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Fabian Keil Sent: Saturday, March 25, 2006 12:13 PM To: Jonathan Horne Cc: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: USB external drive size limitations? Fabian Keil <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > "Jonathan Horne" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > > Last night I plugged in a 300GB Maxtor USB drive into my FreeBSD 6.0 > > server (with a fat filesystem), and it told me it was too big!! > > > Haha, its full of my backups from my previous operating system > > (fedora) and now im going to have a fun time getting those files > > onto my new FreeBSD server! Can someone recommend a course of > > action for me here? Google isn't really turning up anything > > interesting relating to size of external drives. > > Do you already have "options MSDOSFS_LARGE" in your kernel? Forgot to mention that it isn't perfect. I believe the limitations described in http://www.freebsd.org/releases/5.3R/relnotes-i386.html are still true: |The MSDOSFS_LARGE kernel option has been added to support FAT32 file |systems bigger than 128GB. This option is disabled by default. It uses |at least 32 bytes of kernel memory for each file on disk; furthermore |it is only safe to use in certain controlled situations, such as |read-only mount with less than 1 million files and so on. Exporting |these large file systems over NFS is not supported. Fabian -- http://www.fabiankeil.de/ ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to "[EMAIL PROTECTED]"
Re: USB external drive size limitations?
Fabian Keil <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > "Jonathan Horne" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > > Last night I plugged in a 300GB Maxtor USB drive into my FreeBSD 6.0 > > server (with a fat filesystem), and it told me it was too big!! > > > Haha, its full of my backups from my previous operating system > > (fedora) and now im going to have a fun time getting those files > > onto my new FreeBSD server! Can someone recommend a course of > > action for me here? Google isn't really turning up anything > > interesting relating to size of external drives. > > Do you already have "options MSDOSFS_LARGE" in your kernel? Forgot to mention that it isn't perfect. I believe the limitations described in http://www.freebsd.org/releases/5.3R/relnotes-i386.html are still true: |The MSDOSFS_LARGE kernel option has been added to support FAT32 file |systems bigger than 128GB. This option is disabled by default. It uses |at least 32 bytes of kernel memory for each file on disk; furthermore |it is only safe to use in certain controlled situations, such as |read-only mount with less than 1 million files and so on. Exporting |these large file systems over NFS is not supported. Fabian -- http://www.fabiankeil.de/ signature.asc Description: PGP signature
Re: USB external drive size limitations?
"Jonathan Horne" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Last night I plugged in a 300GB Maxtor USB drive into my FreeBSD 6.0 > server (with a fat filesystem), and it told me it was too big!! > Haha, its full of my backups from my previous operating system > (fedora) and now im going to have a fun time getting those files onto > my new FreeBSD server! Can someone recommend a course of action for > me here? Google isn't really turning up anything interesting > relating to size of external drives. Do you already have "options MSDOSFS_LARGE" in your kernel? Fabian -- http://www.fabiankeil.de/ signature.asc Description: PGP signature
RE: USB external drive size limitations?
> Haha, its full of my backups from my previous operating system (fedora) and > now im going to have a fun time getting those files onto my new FreeBSD > server! Can someone recommend a course of action for me here? Google isn't > really turning up anything interesting relating to size of external drives. some ideas: check the fs-type & if possible the version of the fs on your usb-hdd (maybe compat probs?) try attaching the drive b4 you power-on the box and boot try to explicitly (mount_xy and mount-args) mount the drive (ro!) check if the builtin hdd inside your drive can be attached directly on the ata/s-ata/whatever bus inside your machine; copy directly attach your usb-hdd to a working machine, copy via lan check for bios/fw-updates for your hw, maybe usb-support get's better hth & good luck! ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to "[EMAIL PROTECTED]"
