Create and mount a FAT32 partition

Using fdisk, set the system id to b (W95 FAT32)

Download and install dosfstools

Run (as root):

$ mkfs.vfat $yourpartition

In /etc/fstab, use the following options:

/dev/$yourdev /$mountpoint vfat rw,sohrtname=mixed,utf8 0 0

How to resize a partition

First edit the partition table so that your partition has the size you want (i.e delete other partitions around, and so on). Run this as root:

$ fdisk $yourdev

Then use resize2fs to resize your partition (as root):

resize2fs /dev/sda7 [$size]

where $size is optionnal (normally grows the partition to its dimensions given with fdisk)

Use uuid to recognize your devices

When a partition is created, a lot of different filesystems add a universally unique identifier (UUID) to the volume. This can be used to recognize a disk unambiguously. To get a partition's uuid:

$ vol_id $devname

The uuid is given by the ID_FS_UUID line in the output.

On Arch Linux, vol_id can be found in lib/initcpio/udev/vol_id.

You can then add a line like this in your fstab:

UUID=1234-5678-9101-abcde $mountpoint $fstype $opts 0 0