FreeBSD USB disks - booting and backups

[Tijl Coosemans]

On Thursday 23 August 2007 18:31:05 Patrick Baldwin wrote:
> I'm thinking of backing up my FreeBSD 6.2 webmail server by
> installing FreeBSD onto the USB, and then dumping the whole
> filesystem onto the USB.  That way, in the event of a drive failure,
> I can boot off the USB drive, and then just restore everything onto
> the webmail server.
> 
> Has anyone else done this?  I haven't found any mention via Google,
> which has me concerned that there might be a good reason no one's
> done this that I haven't thought of.    One issue I ran into thus far
> has been the 500 GB Western Digital MyBook USB drive I tried first
> makes my system crash when I plug it in.  I can get another USB drive
> and repurpose the one I've got right now, but before I put any more
> resources into this idea, I thought I'd bounce it off some experts.
> 
> Any suggestions, links, etc. welcomed.  Particularly for large
> capacity USB drives that won't crash my system.

I use it for a different purpose than you, but I've installed FreeBSD
onto a 120Gb Western Digital Passport (2.5") USB drive. It was just
like installing normally and works like a charm.

That USB drive isn't supposed to crash your system by the way. Have you
filed a PR or something?