msdosfs4

Usage

Overview

The msdosfs driver will permit the FreeBSD kernel to read and write MS-DOS based file systems.

The most common usage follows:

mount -t msdosfs /dev/ada0sN /mnt

where N is the partition number and /mnt is a mount point. Some users tend to create a /dos directory for msdosfs mount points. This helps to keep better track of the file system, and make it more easily accessible.

It is possible to define an entry in /etc/fstab that looks similar to:

/dev/ada0sN		/dos	msdosfs		rw	0	0

This will mount an MS-DOS based partition at the /dos mount point during system boot. Using /mnt as a permanent mount point is not advised as its intention has always been to be a temporary mount point for floppy and ZIP disks. See hier(7) for more information on FreeBSD directory layout.

Examples

Determine which FAT file system version (e.g, FAT16, FAT32) is a partition formatted with:

file -s /dev/da0s1

gpart(8) may also be used to extract this information.