Dual boot with 2 HDD's ok, but how can windows put data in pfsense's HDD

Ulysses_

Dual boot with pfsense in one drive and windows in another works fine, you choose the one you want from the BIOS settings. But there is a lot of unused space in pfsense's drive.

How can a FAT32 partition be added that windows can read?

Or is there a way for windows to read pfsense's file system (what is it?)?

heper

Mind blown

remlei

none of your theories make sense.

pfsense uses UFS or ZFS
windows uses NTFS

pfsense doesnt use any other filesystem than those 2 supported filesystem or vice versa.
so your option is

have a flashdrive preinstalled with pfsense.
and the physical drive inside your computer for windows.

the only left thing you need to do is just press the hotkey to initiate the boot selection menu of your motherboard.

Ulysses_

Already doing that with 2 physical drives, as it says in the title. Can't pfsense be installed to just the first 8 GB of its physical drive?

So the remaining 500 GB are available for a user data partition storing movies and photographs? Which pfsense does not ever read?

Perhaps in linux's ext3 format that windows can read (there is a driver for this) if fat32 is not allowed?

Ulysses_

@heper:

Mind blown

Why? Don't like watching movies on an offline desktop computer or storing data on it?

pppfsense

ANYTHING is possible in the software world.
You just need the knowledge, the tools and the time.

You can partition the hard drive, either in UFS or ZFS so you can install pfSense in the first partition and leave the other partition for data/space (I use it for Squid cache in my case).

Now, windows won't be able to read ZFS and you may be able to read UFS with some hacks, but it is not worth it due to the risk of corruption.

You can format the 2nd partition with exFat and FreeBSD can mount it, but again, looking for trouble.

If you need space, just get another hard drive…

@Ulysses_:

Already doing that with 2 physical drives, as it says in the title. Can't pfsense be installed to just the first 8 GB of its physical drive?

So the remaining 500 GB are available for a user data partition storing movies and photographs? Which pfsense does not ever read?

Perhaps in linux's ext3 format that windows can read (there is a driver for this) if fat32 is not allowed?