Re: [newbie] FAT question
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 Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com Join the Club : http://www.mandrakeclub.com
Re: [newbie] FAT question
SnapafunFrank wrote: 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 What he is talking about here is creating links for digital camera that is accessed using usb_storage, and so looks like a SCSI drive to the system. He is saying that he would not want to run fdisk on this device, so he would not need /dev/sda, just /dev/sda1. I don't know what would happen if you tried to repartition a digital camera mounted this way, and apparently the author didn't know ether, and didn't want to find out. He is also talking about what happens if your rules do not create all possible device names for a drive, and you use fdisk to create new partitions. You may not be able to access the new partitions without removing the device, and re-attaching it, or rebooting. One other point, you normally do not mount the entire drive when using hard drives - you mount the partitions. But you run fdisk on the entire drive. (Well, you could run fdisk on a partition, but why?) So, you run fdisk on /dev/sda to create/change/delete partitions. But you would mount /dev/sda1. I don't know if I should bring this point up, but you could, if you really wanted to, use /dev/sda in place of /dev/sda1 to create/mount a file system that would be the entire drive. It is not really a good idea, but it can be done. Some of the tools will complain about the missing partition table, but you don't have to have one. Mikkel -- Do not meddle in the affairs of dragons, for you are crunchy and taste good with Ketchup! Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com Join the Club : http://www.mandrakeclub.com
Re: [newbie] FAT question
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 -- Newbie Seeking USER_FUNCTIONALITY always! Regards SnapafunFrank Big or small, a challenge requires the same commitment to resolve. Registered Linux User # 324213 Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com Join the Club : http://www.mandrakeclub.com
Re: [newbie] FAT question
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..!;) -- Good luck, HarM Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com Join the Club : http://www.mandrakeclub.com
Re: [newbie] FAT question
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! -- Newbie Seeking USER_FUNCTIONALITY always! Regards SnapafunFrank Big or small, a challenge requires the same commitment to resolve. Registered Linux User # 324213 Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com Join the Club : http://www.mandrakeclub.com
Re: [newbie] FAT question
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. -- *Sent from a 100 % Microsoft-free workstation* *Running Linux Mandrake 10.1* Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com Join the Club : http://www.mandrakeclub.com
Re: [newbie] FAT question
On Friday 18 March 2005 10:31, 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..!;) OK Harm, the device is there as /dev/sda1. But it is untouchable by any attempt to create a real file system. It works with FAT32 and that is that Kaj Haulrich. -- *Sent from a 100 % Microsoft-free workstation* *Running Linux Mandrake 10.1* Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com Join the Club : http://www.mandrakeclub.com
Re: [newbie] FAT question
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* Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com Join the Club : http://www.mandrakeclub.com
Re: [newbie] FAT question
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 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. -- *Sent from a 100 % Microsoft-free workstation* *Running Linux Mandrake 10.1* Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com Join the Club : http://www.mandrakeclub.com
Re: [newbie] FAT question
On Thursday 17 March 2005 17:16, Mikkel L. Ellertson wrote: Mr. Geek wrote: 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. One problem you run into with the tools from the drive manfacturer is that most of them do not enable USB support, so they will not even see the drive. This will hopefully change as externel USB and Firewire drives become more popular, but for now, you just about have to create a special boot disk if you want to work on something other then a IDE of SCSI drive. (OpenDOS has some nice boot disks...) Mikkel Thanks Mikkel, but you see I just don't have a Windows boot disk. Neither have my daughter, who has a WinXP box. I tried to figure out a way to let her Windows (DOS) format the external harddisk, but gave it up, 'cause there is no point in it : I still can't get a decent file system on it, no matter what. Maybe NTFS is usable but then I can't write to it from my Linux box, the whole idea being to use it as a transport medium and backup between the two boxes. Well, I can still use my camera for transport Kaj haulrich. -- *Sent from a 100 % Microsoft-free workstation* *Running Linux Mandrake 10.1* Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com Join the Club : http://www.mandrakeclub.com
Re: [newbie] FAT question
Kaj Haulrich wrote: On Thursday 17 March 2005 17:16, Mikkel L. Ellertson wrote: Mr. Geek wrote: 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. One problem you run into with the tools from the drive manfacturer is that most of them do not enable USB support, so they will not even see the drive. This will hopefully change as externel USB and Firewire drives become more popular, but for now, you just about have to create a special boot disk if you want to work on something other then a IDE of SCSI drive. (OpenDOS has some nice boot disks...) Mikkel Thanks Mikkel, but you see I just don't have a Windows boot disk. Neither have my daughter, who has a WinXP box. I tried to figure out a way to let her Windows (DOS) format the external harddisk, but gave it up, 'cause there is no point in it : I still can't get a decent file system on it, no matter what. Maybe NTFS is usable but then I can't write to it from my Linux box, the whole idea being to use it as a transport medium and backup between the two boxes. Well, I can still use my camera for transport Kaj haulrich. The tools from the drive manfacturer are their own boot disk. You usualy download a program that creates the floppy. Then boot with the floppy. Or, if you don't like having the larger collection of floppies, you download the Ultimate Boot CD from http://www.ultimatebootcd.com/ and boot with that when you need the tools. Mikkel -- Do not meddle in the affairs of dragons, for you are crunchy and taste good with Ketchup! Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com Join the Club : http://www.mandrakeclub.com
Re: [newbie] FAT question
Kaj Haulrich wrote: 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. -- *Sent from a 100 % Microsoft-free workstation* *Running Linux Mandrake 10.1* No, that is not how it works. If you were using DOS, and possibly Windows 95, you would have problems. But you would have problems accessing the USB drive in the first place, so we will not worry about that. Linux does not have problems with a drive with more then 1024 cylinders. So you can use fdisk to change the partition type to 83, and then run mke2fs to put the new file system on the drive. As I said when I outlined how to do this, you will lose any information that is already one the drive, so make sure you have it backed up. If you want to make sure you can restore the partition table, for what ever reasion, you could run dd if=/dev/sda of=USB_mbr count=1 to save the current MBR and partition table. The problem that fdisk is talking about had to do with older BIOS that could not access more then 1024 cylinders. The way we used to get around that was to have a /boot partition that was below that limit to hold the kernel, and inital RAM disk. That way, lilo could load the kernel using the BIOS, and then the kernel could access the entire drive. When you were dual booting, you also put Windows at the front of the drive. /boot Windows / Swap /home Or something like that. Windows and /boot were below the 1024 limit. We didn't worry about where the rest of the Linux install was. Mikkel -- Do not meddle in the affairs of dragons, for you are crunchy and taste good with Ketchup! Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com Join the Club : http://www.mandrakeclub.com
Re: [newbie] FAT question
On Saturday 19 March 2005 01:20, Mikkel L. Ellertson wrote: Kaj Haulrich wrote: On Thursday 17 March 2005 17:16, Mikkel L. Ellertson wrote: Mr. Geek wrote: 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. One problem you run into with the tools from the drive manfacturer is that most of them do not enable USB support, so they will not even see the drive. This will hopefully change as externel USB and Firewire drives become more popular, but for now, you just about have to create a special boot disk if you want to work on something other then a IDE of SCSI drive. (OpenDOS has some nice boot disks...) Mikkel Thanks Mikkel, but you see I just don't have a Windows boot disk. Neither have my daughter, who has a WinXP box. I tried to figure out a way to let her Windows (DOS) format the external harddisk, but gave it up, 'cause there is no point in it : I still can't get a decent file system on it, no matter what. Maybe NTFS is usable but then I can't write to it from my Linux box, the whole idea being to use it as a transport medium and backup between the two boxes. Well, I can still use my camera for transport Kaj haulrich. The tools from the drive manfacturer are their own boot disk. You usualy download a program that creates the floppy. Then boot with the floppy. Or, if you don't like having the larger collection of floppies, you download the Ultimate Boot CD from http://www.ultimatebootcd.com/ and boot with that when you need the tools. Mikkel Good heavens, Mikkel. How did you find that ? I'll dive into it ASAP. Now, just don't let us get carried away : I wanted some method to defrag this crappy Microsoft FAT32 file system. WindowsXP can't do it. Neither can Linux. So, I figured that backing up the entire content, re-formatting and restoring might be the way to go. But as the file system seems to be hard coded, and I know that Linux can fix anything, I'll download your Floppy-CD, lean back and watch the battle Have a nice week-end... Kaj Haulrich. -- *Sent from a 100 % Microsoft-free workstation* *Running Linux Mandrake 10.1* Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com Join the Club : http://www.mandrakeclub.com
Re: [newbie] FAT question
Kaj Haulrich wrote: On Saturday 19 March 2005 01:20, Mikkel L. Ellertson wrote: The tools from the drive manfacturer are their own boot disk. You usualy download a program that creates the floppy. Then boot with the floppy. Or, if you don't like having the larger collection of floppies, you download the Ultimate Boot CD from http://www.ultimatebootcd.com/ and boot with that when you need the tools. Mikkel Good heavens, Mikkel. How did you find that ? I'll dive into it ASAP. Now, just don't let us get carried away : I wanted some method to defrag this crappy Microsoft FAT32 file system. WindowsXP can't do it. Neither can Linux. So, I figured that backing up the entire content, re-formatting and restoring might be the way to go. But as the file system seems to be hard coded, and I know that Linux can fix anything, I'll download your Floppy-CD, lean back and watch the battle Have a nice week-end... Kaj Haulrich. Well, when you are the local computer Geek, you tend to find tools to make troubleshooting easy. I never know what flavor of hard drive, or what other tool I am going to need, so I have a few CD's I take with me. I have this nice collection of business card CD's as well, that I keep tucked in my tool box as well. Because you never know when you will need them. Let me know how well the CD works for you on the USB drive. I have not had a chance to do much testing of USB drives with it. One more thing on my To Do list, but I keep getting sidetracked... Now, on the other hand, I don't think the file system in hard coded on the USB drive. (Check my other message, where I address the fdisk warnings.) So you should be able to change the drive to an ext3 file system. Remember - the 1024 cylinder warning doesn't apply to Linux. Any BIOS that is going to have a problem with that limit, is not going to be able to boot off a USB device in the first place. And you were not planning on booting a Linux system off the drive anyway. You may want to take a look at http://mandrake.vmlinuz.ca/bin/view/Main/SystemRecovery for some other interesting CDs. Mikkel -- Do not meddle in the affairs of dragons, for you are crunchy and taste good with Ketchup! Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com Join the Club : http://www.mandrakeclub.com
Re: [newbie] FAT question
On Thursday 17 Mar 2005 09:38, 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, 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 -- Registered Linux User No.293302 (http://counter.li.org/) Have you visited http://twiki.mdklinuxfaq.org yet? Mandrake at all levels pgpmdSNOtWXQM.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: [newbie] FAT question
On Thursday 17 March 2005 10:48, Anne Wilson wrote: On Thursday 17 Mar 2005 09:38, 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, 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 ? The linux fdisk utility won't let me do anything on the drive. Kaj Haulrich. -- *Sent from a 100 % Microsoft-free workstation* *Running Linux Mandrake 10.1* Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com Join the Club : http://www.mandrakeclub.com
Re: [newbie] FAT question
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 -- Registered Linux User No.293302 (http://counter.li.org/) Have you visited http://twiki.mdklinuxfaq.org yet? Mandrake at all levels pgp4NoiMrazSF.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: [newbie] FAT question
On Thursday 17 March 2005 05:12 am, Kaj Haulrich wrote: On Thursday 17 March 2005 10:48, Anne Wilson wrote: On Thursday 17 Mar 2005 09:38, 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, 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 ? The linux fdisk utility won't let me do anything on the drive. Kaj Haulrich. Kaj, I know this might sound dumb, but have you tried diskdrake? disk drake seems to me to be a damn well configured partittion manager tool. I never have tried to reformat a USB connected drive with it, but I would ex[ect it to handle it well. -- linux counter #167806 (http://counter.li.org/) website=http://ed-tharp.kicks-ass.org; Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com Join the Club : http://www.mandrakeclub.com
Re: [newbie] FAT question
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. -- *Sent from a 100 % Microsoft-free workstation* *Running Linux Mandrake 10.1* Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com Join the Club : http://www.mandrakeclub.com
Re: [newbie] FAT question
On Thursday 17 March 2005 11:51, et wrote: On Thursday 17 March 2005 05:12 am, Kaj Haulrich wrote: On Thursday 17 March 2005 10:48, Anne Wilson wrote: On Thursday 17 Mar 2005 09:38, 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, 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 ? The linux fdisk utility won't let me do anything on the drive. Kaj Haulrich. Kaj, I know this might sound dumb, but have you tried diskdrake? disk drake seems to me to be a damn well configured partittion manager tool. I never have tried to reformat a USB connected drive with it, but I would ex[ect it to handle it well. Yes, Ed. Diskdrake gives the option to format the drive (/dev/sda1) but nothing happens. The drive seems to be locked. Kaj Haulrich. -- *Sent from a 100 % Microsoft-free workstation* *Running Linux Mandrake 10.1* Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com Join the Club : http://www.mandrakeclub.com
Re: [newbie] FAT question
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. -- Mr. Geek Registered Linux User #190712 Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com Join the Club : http://www.mandrakeclub.com
Re: [newbie] FAT question
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* Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com Join the Club : http://www.mandrakeclub.com
Re: [newbie] FAT question
Kaj Haulrich wrote: 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. NP. I'll be around if you need any help. -- Mr. Geek Registered Linux User #190712 Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com Join the Club : http://www.mandrakeclub.com
Re: [newbie] FAT question
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 Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com Join the Club : http://www.mandrakeclub.com
Re: [newbie] FAT question
Mr. Geek wrote: 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. One problem you run into with the tools from the drive manfacturer is that most of them do not enable USB support, so they will not even see the drive. This will hopefully change as externel USB and Firewire drives become more popular, but for now, you just about have to create a special boot disk if you want to work on something other then a IDE of SCSI drive. (OpenDOS has some nice boot disks...) Mikkel -- Do not meddle in the affairs of dragons, for you are crunchy and taste good with Ketchup! Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com Join the Club : http://www.mandrakeclub.com
Re: [newbie] FAT question
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 -- Do not meddle in the affairs of dragons, for you are crunchy and taste good with Ketchup! Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com Join the Club : http://www.mandrakeclub.com
