On Thursday 17 March 2005 15:03, Andras Keszei wrote:
> On Thu, 2005-03-17 at 20:38, 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.
>
> Kaj,
> The following may be interesting to you: I had a USB thumb drive
> preformatted with FAT32 that was doing weird things under linux.
> When I deleted files off it, no free space was reclaimed. After
> filling the disk and erasing it, it still had no space available.
> So I tried a format under diskdrake: it said unsupported
> filesystem or something. It had the filesystem as grey, but
> somehow it was recognised as vfat. I had to delete the
> filesystem, remove the mountpoint, create a new FAT32 system in
> the empty space (I still need to be compatible), format it again,
> and the thing now works like a charm. All in all, I think not
> all is FAT32 that appears to be so, try giving diskdrake another
> go. At the same time I had a browse on defrag apps for linux, and
> the bottom line seemed to be that linux needs defrag as much as
> it needs antivirus software.
> Hope this wasn't all useless
> cheers
> Andras
Exactly my experience, Andras. Only I can't format the damned thing.
However, tomorrow I'll follow your advice and let diskdrake have
another go at it : I've just backed up the whole caboodle, so
nothing to loose, I suppose.
--
*Sent from a 100 % Microsoft-free workstation*
*Running Linux Mandrake 10.1*
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