On Fri, 30 Oct 2009 18:44:08 +0530, Amarendra Godbole wrote > Thank you all for responses -- I have a better idea now. The only > thing that I noticed was newfs_msdos wipes out the entire disklabel > as well as any fdisk created partitions and gobbles up the entire disk. > > I guess what James Hartley said in this thread is correct -- Windows > must be used to create the DOS partition, and then disklabel to get > the OpenBSD one.
No, the reason the MBR and disklabel were wiped out was due to an error you made: starting the partition at sector #0. That sector contians the MBR and the MBR primary partition table, and the OpenBSD disklabel follows behind. Normally, one would begin the first partition -after- the first track (typically sectors 0-62). But, If you were to use Windows disk management to create a FAT partition of some size on the disk, Windows will begin it at sector #63 for you. Knowledge of disk geometry and usage is not required by a Windows user, as the tools do not allow you the control that fdisk(8) does.
