I have just formatted my FreeBSD 4.9 RELEASE box and installed FreeBSD 5.1.2 RELEASE. This machine acts as a fileserver and consits of two hard drives. One is 8.3 Gb and is used only for the OS and ftp temp location. The other is a 200Gb hard drive and is obviously my main storage drive. I have formatted the 8.3 and installed BSD again but now I'd like to add the 200Gig hard drive to the setup WITHOUT loosing my data. How can I add a drive without formatting it?

I thought I could/should just include the entry (as was before) in my fstab file but after I did that BSD conseuquently wouldn't boot because the 200Gig drive containted 'unexpected inconsistencies' - the hard drive is fine.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

I have my old fstab file backed up but am hesitant to simply copy it across??

Gsee

edit: Since i editted the fstab file and could no longer boot I have re-installed FreeBSD again as i couldn't find a way to fix the fstab without it booting. So I have a fresh install of BSD and now need the 200Gig drive set up again. It used to (and I would like it to still) mount to - /mnt/200Gig/ - anything else you need to know about my previous setup, just ask.

Gsee

Final edit - I found what the problem was. I knew should simply have to mount the drive but I didn't realise that FreeBSD 5.2.1 would give the deivce a completely different name.

For other's with the same problem (if any) - in FreeBSD 4.9 the 200 gig drive was /dev/ad3c/
but in 5.2.1 it's /dev/ad3s1.

there's probably a logical reason for it but there you go...

Gsee

As future reference, you can boot into single-user mode to fix fstab entries. Only / will be mounted at that point. If you need to use vi, you can mount /usr as well.

Reminds me of the time I was at a friends house trying to mount a "Linux ext2" partition on FreeBSD late one December 31st night. You know, one of those things you've done a hundred times.

mount -t msdos /dev/ad0s6 /mnt/pics

Kept getting the same error message.

The next day in the afternoon I didn't have any trouble.


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Gsee:
Thanks for posting your outcome, others will be glad when they go googling.