Kaj Haulrich wrote:

On Friday 18 March 2005 11:39, SnapafunFrank wrote:


H.J.Bathoorn wrote:


On Friday 18 March 2005 09:47, SnapafunFrank wrote:


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


Just a newbie thought : Can you do as root :

# cat /etc/fstab | grep sd

And post it back here............. Be sure the device is
plugged in first.

TIA


Even easier: "cat /dev/sd" on the CML and hit <TAB>...that way
you'll see what's there.
When inserting/plugging the device the specific /dev/sd* file
gets made and ....also gets removed when unplugging.

Repeat after me:
<TAB> is my best on the command line..........!;)


ONLY I SPECIFICALLY WANTED TO VIEW THE FSTAB ENTRY TO CHECK ITS
OPTIONS!



Here it is (on one line) :

/dev/sda1 /mnt/removable auto umask=0022,user,iocharset=iso8859-1,sync,kudzu,codepage=850,noauto,exec,users 0 0


Thanks for this, it tells me that the problem I had does not matter here because you have sync set and not default.

One thing this newbie read somewhere is that /dev/sda? are not formatable ?? Can someone clarify this ?

Ah... here it is:

A key such as KERNEL="sd?1" would match KERNEL names such as "sda1", "sdb1", "sdc1", and equally importantly, it will not match KERNEL names such as sda, sdb, or sg1. The purpose of this key is to ignore the /dev/sda and /dev/sg1 nodes. The device is a digital camera -* I would not dream of fdisking it or anything like that, so these 2 nodes are pretty useless to me.* The key attempts to capture the /dev/sda1 node, which is mountable and therefore useful!

Reverse in you case maybe?

This is within this link

http://www.reactivated.net/udevrules.php

I only mention it here because on other postings within this thread I have seen the references to " sda1 " and only wondered if this is a first step problem.

Of course I know about the umask=0022 being stupid, but hitherto I haven't found a way to let it stay =0.

Each time my daughter uses the drive, I have to unmount it, edit fstab to umask=0 and remount. Then she can use it. Been nagging me for months with the other "removables" like camera, mp3 players and memory sticks. - And : whacking supermount doesn't change a thing.

If I ever find the daemon that changes my fstab against my will, I'll fetch my 9 mm Neuhausen...

Kaj Haulrich.




--
Newbie Seeking USER_FUNCTIONALITY always!

Regards

SnapafunFrank

Big or small, a challenge requires the same commitment to resolve.
Registered Linux User # 324213



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