From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Wed Mar 29 13:43:43 2006 Return-Path: X-Original-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 5F30016A4F7 for ; Wed, 29 Mar 2006 13:43:43 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from freebsd-questions-local@be-well.ilk.org) Received: from mail6.sea5.speakeasy.net (mail6.sea5.speakeasy.net [69.17.117.8]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 0CCBB43D49 for ; Wed, 29 Mar 2006 13:43:43 +0000 (GMT) (envelope-from freebsd-questions-local@be-well.ilk.org) Received: (qmail 14174 invoked from network); 29 Mar 2006 13:43:42 -0000 Received: from dsl092-078-145.bos1.dsl.speakeasy.net (HELO be-well.ilk.org) ([66.92.78.145]) (envelope-sender ) by mail6.sea5.speakeasy.net (qmail-ldap-1.03) with SMTP for ; 29 Mar 2006 13:43:42 -0000 Received: by be-well.ilk.org (Postfix, from userid 1147) id C8E2128425; Wed, 29 Mar 2006 08:43:41 -0500 (EST) Sender: lowell@be-well.ilk.org To: Christopher Sean Hilton References: <20060328232352.GA2765@dagobah.vindaloo.com> From: Lowell Gilbert Date: 29 Mar 2006 08:43:41 -0500 In-Reply-To: <20060328232352.GA2765@dagobah.vindaloo.com> Message-ID: <447j6d1i42.fsf@be-well.ilk.org> Lines: 37 User-Agent: Gnus/5.09 (Gnus v5.9.0) Emacs/21.3 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Cc: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Removable drives X-BeenThere: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: User questions List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Wed, 29 Mar 2006 13:43:43 -0000 Christopher Sean Hilton writes: > I have a question to the community about removable drives, pendrives > and usb and firewire attached hard drives. I'm just wondering how > people are dealing with them in FreeBSD. I don't have any operational > problems with them. I'm just wondering if I'm doing things the hard > way. There are advantages and disadvantages to all the approaches I know. > First Question: Which filesystem are people using on usb flash drives > and removable hard drives? I'm using a mixture of ufs2, ext2, and > msdos. I'm using ufs2 because I'm also using cfs to encrypt the > contents and although I haven't tested this, I'm fairly certain cfs > want's semantics that aren't in the msdos filesystem. FAT filesystems are a reasonable match for most of the uses of portable disks, particularly things like music players and cameras. Doing anything more specialized, though, and your own unique needs will quickly drive the decision. > Second Question: Are most people using vfs_usermount=1? I'm using the > automounter. It's a little bit more work to setup but I'm using a > laptop and since I've started to use the automounter the number of > times that I've had to fsck my removable drive because I've suspended > my laptop with a pendrive still attached and mounted has been reduced > incredibly. One of the nice things about FAT filesystems, aside from the ubiquity of support, is that you can use the mtools so that you don't need to mount the filesystem in the first place. This is a good match for how *I* use portable drives, but may not help you out the same way. Another option is to use the raw device. For things like backups, this works well, because you can just direct the output of tar directly to the device. Or pass it through compression and encryption filters on the way.