[HOWTO] - Mount a DOS firewire partition

P

physicsGuy

Registered
DOS partitions on firewire drives don't mount automatically, in OS X or 9. Here is a solution for OS X. You have to know the name of the DOS partition.

In terminal:
df -k
You will see a list of drives in the format /dev/diskXsY,
where X is associated with the physical drive and Y is associated with the partition.
As a definitive example, let's assume you have an internal drive with two partitions and an external firewire drive with an HFS partition and an invisible, unmounted DOS partition.
Then you might see X=0, Y=6 and 7 for the internal drive (for some reason, Y=6 is always the first number; I don't pretend to understand why). And you might see X=1, Y=6 for the firewire HFS partion. So you will use X=1, Y=7 for the firewire DOS partition in the following:
sudo mkdir /Volumes/(name of your DOS partition)
Password: (enter your root password)
sudo mount -t msdos /dev/disk1s7 /Volumes/(name of DOS partition)
[we just used X=1, Y=7 there as an example.]
In OS 10.1.5, you should now see the DOS partition on the desktop. In previous versions (10.1.4 and earlier), use Force Quit from the apple menu to relaunch the finder, and you will see it.

Caution:
X in diskXsY is variable between boots. Just because X=0 for the internal drive and X=1 for the external in one boot, don't assume it will always be that way. It might be reversed on the next boot.
This prevents you from using the usual unix fstab file to get it to automount. Someone on some forum was mumbling that this might change in Jaguar.
 
awesome post, really appreciate that insight.

As a side note though, I use 10.1.5, and I booted into 9.2.2 and my dos firewire partition DID mount automatically. [weird?]

It doesnt, as you mention, in OS X however.
 
i would really like to see that inconsistent behavior of disk device names be fixed. i use fstab to mount my home directory, and to move my swap file, but whenever the disk changes, my swapfile has to go back to the boot disk. so i would like to see that fixed in jaguar.

do you have any leads about that?
 
gibbs: My experience on OS 9 not automounting a DOS firewire partition is with 9.2.1 on an unsupported, hacked install (Mac 7500). So it may very well be that it will mount automatically in 9.2.2 and/or on a supported system.

lethe: I don't remember where I saw the post about the disk number assignment method maybe changing in jaguar. Sorry. Either around here or at macosxhints.com. Seemed like it was someone working at apple, or who used to work there.
 
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