# mounting FAT32 external HD under MacOSX



## zeusj34 (Sep 11, 2003)

hi

I have a USB external disk formatted as FAT32 (only a 38 gig partition) that I want to use under WinXP and MacOS X (have 10.1)- I can use it under WinXP with no problems, but I cannot mount it under OSX. I really do not care that it does not automount, but it seems that there must be a way to mount it manually.    

Can someone tell me how to mount the disk from the OSX command line???

I tried "ls /dev/rdisk?" and can see the additional disk "/dev/rdisk1" when I plug in the USB external HD.

Thanks in advance to anyone who can help.

P-


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## Cheryl (Sep 14, 2003)

Check out this thread:
http://www.macosx.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=35890

See if that helps you.


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## zeusj34 (Sep 15, 2003)

That particular thread did not help much, but I found others elsewhere that did, and want to post it to help others-

First, find the drive and partition with the command

ls /dev/disk*

(or "df -k", make these commands before and after you plug in the drive) Another option is to select the partition with the disk utility and run "verify" under the first aid tab. In my case, I get:

Verifying disk "Untitled 1".
**/dev/disk1s1 
Verify Completed.

Now that you know the partition name, create a directory in root to mount, ie:

mkdir /msdosdisk

Then:

sudo mount_msdos /dev/disk1s1 /msdosdisk

(give the root password, replace "disk1s1" with the name you get in your case)

Now, in the Finder select "Go to folder" from the menu and type:

/msdosdisk

The drive magically appears on the desktop!!! and you are ready to go.

To unmount the disk, drag the disk to the trash, but you need to also unmount it from Unix with:

sudo umount -f /msdosdisk


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