Date: Mon, 26 Oct 2009 14:00:20 +0100 From: Polytropon <freebsd@edvax.de> To: rob1940@gmail.com Cc: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: WD External Disc Drive Message-ID: <20091026140020.780615da.freebsd@edvax.de> In-Reply-To: <aab0909a0910260437m1530fd8av7071fb45e638c75e@mail.gmail.com> References: <aab0909a0910251718q4dc26baeu7c0a452add98d783@mail.gmail.com> <20091026110905.f802174a.freebsd@edvax.de> <aab0909a0910260437m1530fd8av7071fb45e638c75e@mail.gmail.com>
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On Mon, 26 Oct 2009 22:37:50 +1100, Rob Hurle <rob1940@gmail.com> wrote:
> Thanks for your comment. "disk" began life as the American spelling
> (probably older English, copied from Greek) and "disc" was the English
> (UK, Australia, probably South Africa and other places). Here, in
> Australia, I am used to "disc", but I take your point and agree that
> the two spellings most likely have their particular usages. In the
> fullness of time I suspect that the scheme you outline will become
> widely accepted. There's other instances of particular preferences in
> spelling in Australian English vis a vis American - for example,
> "recognize" versus "recognise". As others have pointed out, the
> English language is a bit of a mongrel :-)
Wow, that's interesting to know. From my "IT career", I
always read "disks", not "discs" (in its meaning as optical
discs when they started to "exist" in the 80s).
The differentiation disk vs. disc started at this time and
is very common today to distinguish optical media from
magnetic media. Magneto-optical media is called MO disc
though. :-)
> Thanks for your comments too, about use of the FAT32 file system. I
> had thought about that, but the NTFS seemed to be a bit more universal
> - I'm not sure that FAT file systems are recognised by default on Macs
> (for example).
I always thought FAT is one of the most universal file systems
(at least when "Windows" is involved); if it's not, I do
consider tar the most universal file system (allthough it is
no file system in particular). It works on all UNIX flavours
I encountered, as well as on Mac OS. The only thing you need
is a tar program that reads from or writes to the preferred
media. Of course, "Windows" lacks such a program.
Example. On Linux
# tar cvf /dev/fd0.h1440 <sourcefile(s)>
On Sun Solaris:
# tar xvf /dev/rfd0
It works on IRIX, HP-UX and other UNIXes, too, and it works
with every media (floppy, CD, DVD, USB stick, external hard
disk, MO disc etc.). The only thing you have to grant access
to is the device (usually via its device file).
As for your intended use, well, try FAT. Sadly, my iBook
doesn't work yet, so I can't check. In MICROS~1 land, FAT
is recognized among all the "Windows", and r/w support
is fine on FreeBSD. Mac OS X should be able to use it,
too.
> Rob Hurle
> ANU, College of Asia and the Pacific
> School of Culture, History and Language
^^^^^^^^
That explains everything. :-)
--
Polytropon
Magdeburg, Germany
Happy FreeBSD user since 4.0
Andra moi ennepe, Mousa, ...
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