formatting an external hardrive

[the.phule]

On 1/9/09, Josh Grosse <josh at jggimi.homeip.net> wrote:
> 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.

Thanks i'll have a look at fdisk as well then cheers for the heads up.

k