# Problem mounting a slice on USB



## niellusNL (Nov 1, 2012)

Hi all,

How are you doing? I am trying to play around by installing FreeBSD onto a USB drive and I seem to have come across a rather simple problem... (or challenge if you like).

Currently I am running FreeBSD 9.0-RELEASE on my netbook in a XFCE environment, from where I am trying the install-to-usb approach.

What I did was using gpart(8) to create a new partition scheme on my USB drive:


```
=>      34  31293373  da0  GPT  (14G)
        34      1024    1  freebsd-boot  (512k)
      1058  25165824    2  freebsd-ufs  (12G)
  25166882   6126525    3  freebsd-swap  (2.9G)
```

I installed the gptboot instructions to the first slice using:


```
bootcode -b pmbr -p gptboot -i 1 da0
```
(pwd = /boot)

So far so good!

Next I used the links browser to find and download the following packages: base.txz and kernel.txz. In order to have a place to extract I decided to make a new filesystem on da0p2. Using this code:


```
newfs /dev/da0p2
```

My next undertaking involved creating a proper mountpoint for the filesystem, which now resides on /dev/da0p2 (a simple UFS by default I learned, when newfs is used without any options). I created a new folder; /mnt/freebsd.

Now when I want to mount my new filesystem using the command:


```
mount /dev/da0p2 /mnt/freebsd
```

I read an error:


```
mount: /dev/da0p2 : Invalid argument
```

I did partition using gpart and I created a filesystem with newfs. I tried the procedure a couple of times and with different settings and all.

Could anyone help me in the right direction here? I have done searches on Google but somehow I can't fit all the bits and pieces of information in the right order :-(

Thanks in advance,
Niels


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## wblock@ (Nov 1, 2012)

Does /mnt/freebsd exist?


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## niellusNL (Nov 1, 2012)

Yup! I described in the above that I created it.


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## niellusNL (Nov 1, 2012)

Looks like it got better. The USB drive I tried installing to was a USB 3.0 drive. I replaced it with a USB 2.0 drive (the laptop only has USB 2.0) and all works accordingly.

So, USB 3.0 on USB 2.0 = No Go. I could still see the drive and make adjustments to it. Is anyone able to elaborate?


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## SirDice (Nov 2, 2012)

Odd as USB 3.0 devices should be backwards compatible with USB 2.0. 

But I've had some issues too but the other way around, USB 2.0 devices on USB 3.0 ports. Somehow this compatibility doesn't work as good as it should.


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