format/newfs larger external consumer drives

[Cary]

Don whY <Don.whY at gmx.com> writes:

> Hi,
>
> When building a filesystem (FFS) on these 1/2/3/4TB external USB
> drives, any suggestions?  E.g., changing block sizes?  Cut into
> multiple slices to make fsck's job easier (as well as *recovery*)?
>
> Any other pointers?
>
> [Note that I'm not looking for "performance" -- otherwise I wouldn't
> be going the external route -- but, rather, "bulk, semi-offline
> storage"]
>
> Thx,
> --don

Before worrying about fsck(8) I recommend you think about using
geom(8) to put a journal on the device if your
plan is to create a FFS filesystem.  The journal consumes some
drive space but for any filesystem over 20-30 GB
it won't limit your storage capacity very much.

I do not have any external drives formatted with FFS, and I would be
interested to know myself if it is at all possible to use gjournal(8)
with an external usb drive. Someone else on the list must know
the answer to that question.

You should read the man page for gjournal(8) and note the part about
disabling soft-updates and using the async mount(8) option.

There is a short intro to the topic in the handbook.
http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en/books/handbook/geom-gjournal.html


Cary