FreeBSD Disk Partitioning

A couple weeks ago, I monopolized the freebsd-hackers mailing list by asking a couple simple, innocent questions about managing disks using gpart(8) instead of the classic fdisk(8) and disklabel(8). This is my attempt to rationalize and summarize a small cup of the flood of information I received.

The FreeBSD kernel understands several different disk partitioning schemes, including the traditional x86 MBR (slices), the current GPT, BSD disklabels, as well as schemes from Apple, Microsoft, NEC...