From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Thu Nov 16 08:52:06 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 277E016A403 for ; Thu, 16 Nov 2006 08:52:06 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from lists@oak-wood.co.uk) Received: from ash.oak-wood.co.uk (ash.oak-wood.co.uk [62.3.200.116]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 96C1F43D64 for ; Thu, 16 Nov 2006 08:52:05 +0000 (GMT) (envelope-from lists@oak-wood.co.uk) Received: from localhost (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by ash.oak-wood.co.uk (Postfix) with ESMTP id 4CF0AA6F36 for ; Thu, 16 Nov 2006 08:52:04 +0000 (GMT) Received: from ash.oak-wood.co.uk ([127.0.0.1]) by localhost (ash.oak-wood.co.uk [127.0.0.1]) (amavisd-new, port 10024) with LMTP id 20498-03-2 for ; Thu, 16 Nov 2006 08:52:04 +0000 (GMT) Received: from celandine.oak-wood.co.uk (celandine.oak-wood.co.uk [62.3.200.115]) by ash.oak-wood.co.uk (Postfix) with ESMTP id 1CE9CA6F33 for ; Thu, 16 Nov 2006 08:52:04 +0000 (GMT) Message-ID: <3UroRaFMaCXFFwwJ@celandine.oak-wood.co.uk> Date: Thu, 16 Nov 2006 08:51:24 +0000 To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org From: Chris Hastie MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain;charset=us-ascii;format=flowed User-Agent: Turnpike/6.02-U () Subject: Big external drives - which filesystem? 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: Thu, 16 Nov 2006 08:52:06 -0000 I've just acquired a Western Digital 200GB USB 2 external HDD. After some initial glitches my FreeBSD 5.4-RELEASE machine seems to recognise it fine. It comes pre-formatted with a single FAT32 file system (although confusingly there is a note in the manual about FAT32 not supporting partitions >32 GB and suggesting you change it to NTFS). Attempting to mount this hits the "mountmsdosfs(); disk too big, sorry" problem. The primary intended use for this drive is for off-site backups, but it would be useful if it was formatted such that I can easily plug it into Windows boxes to get at files occasionally. What are my best options for achieving this? The MSDOSFS_LARGE kernel option seems to come with a lot of warnings and caveats. Is it really as ropey as it sounds? Is NTFS an option? Or would I be better partitioning the drive into two FAT32 partitions of < 128GB each? If I go down that route how does this appear to FreeBSD - presumably as different slices on da0 which are mounted separately? Or am I just asking for trouble using these filesystems and should just stick to ufs2 and abandon any plans to maintain compatibility with windows machines? Thanks for your help. -- Chris Hastie