black screens and fat32 and fsck, oh my...

[Lowell Gilbert]

1) You probably lost the data on the external drive; using the
   whole-disk device for new filesystems will tend to do that.  That
   means it probably isn't FAT32 any more.

2) Don't use fsck on an active partition.  That means umount it first,
   or at *least* re-mount it read-only.

3) Remember that FreeBSD 5.x is still intended mostly for "early
   adopters." 

4) Please try to ask one question per message.