# How To: Handling of fat32 and ntfs usb devices



## Deleted member 58914 (Oct 25, 2019)

I hope this can be useful to someone, those are commands I found useful regarding ntfs or fat usb devices since I started using freebsd.

*To see available usb devices name:*


```
geom disk list
```

or


```
gpart show
```


*To manually mount a ntfs usb drive(da0) partition(or slice) 1(s1):*

You must had installed fusefs-ntfs. When you want to use it first type:

```
sudo kldload fuse
```

Then:


```
sudo ntfs-3g /dev/da0s1 /YOURMOUNTPOINT
```


*Format an usb drive to fat32:*

Use dd to write zeros to the device(/dev/zero) starting 2mb(bs=2m) once(count=1). da0 is the usual name of the device if you only have one plugged in your laptop. If you do not use bs and count, it will erase all the usb stick and it will take a long time.


```
dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/da0 bs=2m count=1
```

If needed to clear the usb stick, you can:

```
gpart destroy -F da0
```

The below create a partition table, and then a fat32 partition.


```
gpart create -s mbr da0
gpart add -t fat32 da0
```

The following will then create a fat 32 filesystem with the label you specify.  The label will be your memory stick name.


```
newfs_msdos -L THENAMEYOUWANT  -F 32 /dev/da0s1
```


*To burn an iso to usb device:*


```
dd if=NAMEOFFILE of=/dev/da0
```


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