I'm replacing one of my NetBSD machines with a new one. As always, disk's 
have grown big and cheap. This time I got this disk and controller:

pciide0 at pci0 dev 7 function 1: Intel 82371AB IDE controller (PIIX4)
pciide0: bus-master DMA support present
pciide0: primary channel wired to compatibility mode
wd0 at pciide0 channel 0 drive 0: <IBM-DTTA-371440>
wd0: drive supports 16-sector pio transfers, lba addressing
wd0: 13783MB, 16383 cyl, 16 head, 63 sec, 512 bytes/sect x 28229040 sectors
wd0: 32-bits data port
wd0: drive supports PIO mode 4, DMA mode 2, Ultra-DMA mode 2
pciide0: primary channel interrupting at irq 14
pciide0: secondary channel wired to compatibility mode
pciide0: disabling secondary channel (no drives)
wd0(pciide0:0:0): using PIO mode 4, Ultra-DMA mode 2 (using DMA data transfers)

I don't need many partitions, so I created this disklabel:

# /dev/rwd0d:
type: unknown
disk: IBM-DTTA-371440 
label: IBMDTTA371440 
flags:
bytes/sector: 512
sectors/track: 63
tracks/cylinder: 16
sectors/cylinder: 1008
cylinders: 16383
total sectors: 28229040
rpm: 7200
interleave: 1
trackskew: 0
cylinderskew: 0
headswitch: 0		# milliseconds
track-to-track seek: 0	# milliseconds
drivedata: 0 

5 partitions:
#        size   offset     fstype   [fsize bsize   cpg]
  a:   193536        0     4.2BSD     1024  8192    16   # (Cyl.    0 - 191)
  b:   532224   193536       swap                        # (Cyl.  192 - 719)
  c: 28229040        0     unused        0     0         # (Cyl.    0 - 28004)
  d: 28229040        0     unused        0     0         # (Cyl.    0 - 28004)
  e: 27503280   725760     4.2BSD     1024  8192    16   # (Cyl.  720 - 28004)

Right now "newfs" is doing it's job on /dev/rwd0e - and it's dumping block
numbers for super block backups since several minutes.

Just to be sure - ffs won't do updates on all this blocks everytime the 
filesystem is unmounted? Or even at sync time? I understand this block is
important, but are  thousands of copies realy necessary?


I should learn something about ffs someday...


Martin