Formatting USB disk as UFS

bertieb...@gmail.com

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Oct 8, 2009, 5:05:48 AM10/8/09

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Got a 500Gb USB disk that I want to format as UFS (Cant use FAT32
because I want to put a large 18Gb file on there).

Plugged in and did rmformat and it seems to be recognise. How do I
format and mount as a filesystem?

Ian Collins

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Oct 8, 2009, 5:10:53 AM10/8/09

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Why not use ZFS?

zpool create <pool name> <device>

--
Ian Collins

Stefaan A Eeckels

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Oct 8, 2009, 10:26:35 AM10/8/09

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On Thu, 8 Oct 2009 02:05:48 -0700 (PDT)
"BertieB...@gmail.com" <bertieb...@gmail.com> wrote:

> Plugged in and did rmformat and it seems to be recognise. How do I
> format and mount as a filesystem?

There's no difference (logically speaking) between a USB disk and a
SCSI, SATA, SAS or FC/AL disk. Use the "format" command to partition the
disk and then create a UFS file system using "newfs".

--
Stefaan A Eeckels
--
When the need is strong, there are those who will believe anything.
-- Arnold Lobel

solx

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Oct 12, 2009, 7:43:26 AM10/12/09

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I recently purchased USB ide/sata 3.5" drive caddy and inserted a 1TB
Hitachi SATA drive and formatted using UFS. I thought about using ZFS
but decided not to at this stage.

The process formatting the drive for UFS is very convoluted

1. The drive is detected so that it appears in rmformat -l

2. Create a Solaris partition on the disk (change /vol reference)

# fdisk /vol/dev/rdsk/c5t0d0/unknown_format

3. Unplug/plug the USB drive

4. Get the drive details

# fdisk -W - /vol/dev/aliases/rmdisk0

* /vol/dev/aliases/rmdisk0 default fdisk table
* Dimensions:
* 512 bytes/sector
* 126 sectors/track
* 255 tracks/cylinder
* 60800 cylinders
*
* systid:
* 1: DOSOS12
* 2: PCIXOS
* 4: DOSOS16
* 5: EXTDOS
* 6: DOSBIG
* 7: FDISK_IFS
* 8: FDISK_AIXBOOT
* 9: FDISK_AIXDATA
* 10: FDISK_0S2BOOT
* 11: FDISK_WINDOWS
* 12: FDISK_EXT_WIN
* 14: FDISK_FAT95
* 15: FDISK_EXTLBA
* 18: DIAGPART
* 65: FDISK_LINUX
* 82: FDISK_CPM
* 86: DOSDATA
* 98: OTHEROS
* 99: UNIXOS
* 101: FDISK_NOVELL3
* 119: FDISK_QNX4
* 120: FDISK_QNX42
* 121: FDISK_QNX43
* 130: SUNIXOS
* 131: FDISK_LINUXNAT
* 134: FDISK_NTFSVOL1
* 135: FDISK_NTFSVOL2
* 165: FDISK_BSD
* 167: FDISK_NEXTSTEP
* 183: FDISK_BSDIFS
* 184: FDISK_BSDISWAP
* 190: X86BOOT
* 191: SUNIXOS2
* 238: EFI_PMBR
* 239: EFI_FS
*

* Id Act Bhead Bsect Bcyl Ehead Esect Ecyl Rsect Numsect
191 128 0 1 2 254 63 1023 32130 1953471870

5. Multiple ( Numsect * Bytes per Sector )/ (1024*1024) to get partition
0 and 2 size (100% of drive)

( 1953471870 * 512 )/ 1048576 = 953843MB

6. Create a partition file disk_slice.txt for rmformat

slices: 0 = 0, 953843MB, "wm", "unassigned" :
1 = 0, 0MB, "wu", "unassigned" :
2 = 0, 953843MB, "wm", "backup"

7. Write ufs partition information to Solaris drive partition

# rmformat -s disk_slice.txt /vol/dev/aliases/rmdisk0

8. UFS format drive

# newfs /vol/dev/aliases/rmdisk0

9. Drive is automatically mounted as unamed_rmdisk

solx

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Oct 17, 2009, 2:41:08 PM10/17/09

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If you shutdown to single user mode

# shutdown -iS -g0 -y

then plug in your USB drive, run

# rmformat -l

to identify the drive and its device reference, which can be used to
mount the drive

# mount -F ufs /dev/dsk/c3t0d0s0 /usbdrive

you can then ufsdump

# ufsdump 0bf 64 /usbdrive/ufsdump.YYYYMMDD /

ufsdump output, I found that 540GB takes around six hours

# umount /usbdrive