On Thursday 17 March 2005 12:17, Mr. Geek wrote:
> Kaj Haulrich wrote:
> > On Thursday 17 March 2005 11:41, Anne Wilson wrote:
> >>On Thursday 17 Mar 2005 10:12, Kaj Haulrich wrote:
> >>>>Kaj, if you have a windows boot disk, use fdisk to completely
> >>>>remove the partition, then let MCC deal with it. I've never
> >>>>used the linux fdisk, but I would have thought you could do
> >>>>the same with that.
> >>>>
> >>>>Anne
> >>>
> >>>Thanks, Anne. But..eh.. I don't have Windows disk, and even
> >>> if I had, how could I get in into the external drive ?
> >>
> >>Ah - I missed that it was an external drive - sorry about that.
> >>I've never used an external drive, but I would think that you
> >>could only do that if the bios recognised the external drive -
> >> I understand that some do.
> >>
> >>>The linux fdisk utility won't let me do anything on the drive.
> >>
> >>Is the drive seen at all? I would have thought that if the
> >> drive is recognised it should be possible to remove the
> >> partition as long as it's unmounted?
> >>
> >>Anne
> >
> > The drive is seen OK, but trying to format it with a real file
> > system is a no go. I'm wondering if someone wrote a defragger
> > for linux to use on a FAT32 partition ? - It's my impression
> > that many here have such a partition for their Windows stuff.
> > I'll google around some. No major problem though, just my
> > perfectionism....
> >
> > Kaj Haulrich.
>
> Kaj; I think Anne has the right idea. I have several clients
> using external USB drives instead of other types of backup
> drives/media. Many of them came partitioned and pre-formatted as
> FAT32, but Diskdrake made fast work of it.
>
> One thing you should consider though, is that it helps sometimes
> to delete the mount-point folder right after you unmount the
> drive and before you attempt to delete the FAT32 partition.
>
> Your problem may have something to do with that. If not, then
> this will make sure that drive access and permissions are updated
> at the least.
>
> If necessary, go to the harddrive manufacturer's website and
> download their diagnostics tools. Some like Maxtor have a
> bootable ISO image you can download and use to reformat the drive
> back to factory standards. Others have the same type of tools
> which can be run from a bootable floppy diskette.
>
> Worst-case, you can remove the hard drive from it's USB case and
> temporarily connect it as a slave drive on your Linux box. Once
> Diskdrake sees the drive you can proceed normally and delete and
> create new partitions and re-format the drive the way you prefer.
>
> Your problem might also be that the circuitry in the USB box
> itself may have either a hardware or software 'Lock' system.
> Check your owners manual for the USB box to see if it does. Once
> more possibility is that the controller chip in the USB case does
> not support Linux, but I find that highly unlikely.
>
> IN all cases, you'll have to unmount the drive from diskdrake to
> begin the process, so keep that in mind.
Thanks a lot, Mr. Geek - what a lot of options :-)
Funny thing is, Diskdrake doesn't color the /dev/sda1 meaning it
can't see the FS type. And, yes, this is a Maxtor device, works
fine apart from this issue. Now, I'll play with your suggestions.
Kaj Haulrich.
--
*Sent from a 100 % Microsoft-free workstation*
*Running Linux Mandrake 10.1*
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