On Thursday 17 March 2005 17:26, Mikkel L. Ellertson wrote:
> Kaj Haulrich wrote:
> > I've just got my hands on a 160 GB external USB hard disk.
> > Now, this thing comes preformatted with a FAT32 (vfat) file
> > system. When I unmount the thing I can't reformat the drive
> > with a decent file system like ReiserFS, JFS, ext2 or ext3 from
> > be it the MCC or by hand. I can't even re-partition it with
> > FAT32 ?
> >
> > So here it goes : will this FAT32 file system become
> > fragmented over time like any other Windows file system ?
> >
> > If yes, how to defrag it ?
> >
> > Or, will I have to move the FS to another drive back-and-forth
> > in order to defrag ?
> >
> > TIA
> >
> > Kaj Haulrich.
>
> I deleted the wrong message, so this is not a direct reply to
> this message, but to one later in the thread... :-(
>
> When you were trying to work with the drive, what device were you
> giving fdisk? If you unmount the FAT partition first, you should
> be able to use something like "fdisk /dev/sda" to get at the
> partition table. If you can, then it is simple to change the
> drive to another file system. If you are happy with it being one
> large partition, then change the type (t) to 83 (ext2/3) and save
> (w) the updated partition table. Then run "mke2fs -j /dev/sda1"
> to create an ext3 file system.
>
> If you have any data on the drive you want to keep, BACK IT UP
> before starting this.
>
> Please keep in mind that the drive may not be /dev/sda and the
> partition may not be /dev/sda1 - it depends on your system, and
> how the drive was partitioned.
>
> Mikkel
Well, fdisk could "see" the /dev/sda1 but report this :
-- [EMAIL PROTECTED] kaj]# fdisk /dev/sda1
The number of cylinders for this disk is set to 19928.
There is nothing wrong with that, but this is larger than 1024,
and could in certain setups cause problems with:
1) software that runs at boot time (e.g., old versions of LILO)
2) booting and partitioning software from other OSs
(e.g., DOS FDISK, OS/2 FDISK)
So, as I understand it, there's no idea in having a 160 GB disk when
only a 5% of it is usable...
Kaj Haulrich.
--
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