Adding a new disk in FreeBSD

  • OS: FreeBSD 8.2 (64bit)
  • Scenario: I need to add a new disk to my VMware guest. In this example I will be adding a 60GB disk and mounting it as /data

So you’ve added your disk in VMware. Now you need to configure and mount it.

On the FreeBSD console type sysinstall. This will take you into the configuration menu. Select Configure.

When in the configure section then Fdisk.

Select the disk you have just added. In this example it is da1

Select A (to use entire disk) then select W (to write the changes ). After this select “None (Do not install boot manager)”

When complete return to the previous screen and select Label. 

Then select C (and use the default value)

Then add the label (in this case /data)

When complete exit back to the command prompt.

Edit /etc/fstab with your favourite editor (i use Vi) and enter a line similar to below to mount the /data partition on next boot. In my example the slice name is da1s1d.

Reboot. When the machine has reloaded type df -h

You should see your new shiny new /data partition