On Sat, 27 May 2006 08:22:14 +0400, "Rakhesh Sasidharan"
<rakheshster@gmail.com> wrote:

> > I can clearly use FFS, but that's NetBSD-only; I couldn't share the drive
> > with a Windows box.  FAT32 is, as I recall, size-limited; certainly,
> > Windows won't even format a large partition that way.  NetBSD can't write
> > NTFS file systems.  Are there other options?
> 
> I checked up a bit on FAT32 btw. FAT32 is size-limited, but only when
> it comes to *creating* it on Windows 2000/ XP. The real limit of FAT32
> is 2TB, but Windows 2000/ XP doesn't let you create FAT32 partitions
> larger than 32GB.
> (http://www.windowsitpro.com/Article/ArticleID/27253/27253.html)

Ah -- that's a very big help.
> 
> The trick is to boot with a Windows 98 disk, and then make FAT32
> partitions larger than 32MB. Windows 2000/ XP can read partitions
> larger than 32GB -- no issues with that.
> (http://www.petri.co.il/install_windows_xp_on_large_fat32_partitions.htm)

Not that I have any Win98 lying around...  Hmm -- I wonder if I still have
some DOS boot disks.
> 
> Maybe NetBSD's "newfs_msdos" command can make FAT32 partitions larger
> than 32GB? You could try and post your results here perhaps?

Will do.
> 
> NetBSD 3.0 has a limit of 128GB on FAT32 partitions though. That has
> been removed for 4.0 and onwards.
> (http://article.gmane.org/gmane.os.netbsd.help/14966)

One of the machines of interest is running 3.0 -- but I've been mulling
upgrading it to get the better USB support.
> 
> Hope that helps. Maybe you can go with FAT32 (all OSes seem to have
> support for FAT32 anyways) instead of ext2fs or anything else.
> 
That's the best choice, I think -- I don't have to worry about installing
Windows drivers on other folks' machines.

Thanks!

		--Steven M. Bellovin, http://www.cs.columbia.edu/~smb