FreeBSD

What you see:

What you think:

This is on an existing FreeBSD install. I'm not booting from the SSD; I'm just adding it so it will show up at /var/cache.

I installed the solid-state drive on a Dell OptiPlex 755. I unplugged the SATA cable from the DVD-ROM drive (who uses optical media anymore?) and connected the cable from SATA1 on the motherboard to the SSD.

When booting, FreeBSD found the drive:

Next, I formatted it using sysinstall and fdisk using the information found in the FreeBSD Handbook. The only special thing I did was to add Newfs Opts in the Disklabel Editor to add -i 1024 since I know I'm going to have a gazillion small files and didn't want to run out of inodes.

I knew what to put in fstab by looking in the DiskLabel Editor under the "Part" column.

Here's my new /etc/fstab.

# Device		Mountpoint	FStype	Options		Dump	Pass#
/dev/twed0s1b		none		swap	sw		0	0
/dev/twed0s1a		/		ufs	rw,noatime		1	1
/dev/twed0s1d		/tmp		ufs	rw,noatime		2	2
/dev/twed0s1e		/usr		ufs	rw,noatime		2	2
/dev/twed0s1f		/var		ufs	rw,noatime		2	2
/dev/ad10s1d		/var/cache            ufs     rw,noatime              2       2

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Warning. Follow these instructions at your own risk. I am not responsible when you use dd to blow away your kitty pictures.

Download the FreeBSD 8.1 memory stick image from a FreeBSD repository. I picked one from here.

Plug in your USB stick. OS X will mount it.

You want to unmount the volume while keeping the drive available. To do this, open Disk Utility, click on the name of the mounted volume, and click the Unmount button.

Now you need to know the disk's identifier. You can find this out by right-clicking the disk in Disk Utility. The disk identifier of my USB stick was disk4.

Finally, copy the memory stick image onto the memory stick, substituting the disk identifier into this terminal command. if means "in file" and of means "out file".

So the commands I issued looked like this (yours will be different, since your disk identifier will be different).

When it's done, dd says:

That's 22 minutes.

Back to Disk Utility. Select the memory stick. Click the Eject button. Now go boot FreeBSD!