How to format an external hard drive?

[Jon M. Hanson]

On Mon, Sep 22, 2008 at 03:33:05PM -0700, Josef Lowder wrote:
> I received a small 38-Gig external harddrive as a gift
> and it is apparently formatted with an ntfs file system.
> 
> It mounts automatically when I plug it in to my Mandriva
> system USB port, and I can read the files that are there,
> but I cannot write to it as it gives a message "read only
> file system."
> 
> So, what would be the best way to format it as a fat 32
> so I can plug it in and use it on either my Linux system
> or on my xp laptop?
> 
> While I have not used it for anything, below are some of the
> files that I found on this HD:
> 
> Contents of external HD:
> 
> /dev/sda1              38G  212M   38G   1% /mnt/New_Volume
> /dev/sda1              38G  212M   38G   1% /mnt/New_Volume
> 
> # cd /mnt/New_Volume
> # ls -ltr
> dr-x------  1 root root 0 Feb 23  2006 System Volume Information/
> # cd System*
> # ls -ltr
> dr-x------  1 root root 0 Sep 21 16:19 RECYCLER/
> -r--------  2 root root 0 Feb 23  2006 MountPointManagerRemoteDatabase
> dr-x------  1 root root 0 Sep 21 16:18
> _restore{D5341F9C-33F7-43CF-8BD2-1AE937C9BA1B}/
> dr-x------  1 root root 0 Sep 21 16:18 RP471/
> -r--------  1 root root 1390 Sep 21 16:19 change.log
> # cat change.log
> ????????\Device\HarddiskVolume9\System Volume
>  Information\_restore{D5341F9C-33F7-43CF-8BD2-1AE937C9BA1B}
> \RP471\change.logd???????????????? \Converted2d`????????????????\RECYCLER`??????????????????x\
> RECYCLER\S-1-5-21-947519380-1418259369-3847320399-1006?????????? ??????????\
> RECYCLER\S-1-5-21-947519380-1418259369-3847320399-1006\
> desktop.ini????????????x\RECYCLER\S-1-5-21-947519380-1418259369-3847320399-1006??`????????\
> RECYCLER`??????????????????
> \Converted2\RECYCLER\S-1-5-21-947519380-1418259369-3847320399-1006\
> De1???    CONVER~1??
> #
> # cd RECYCLER
> # ls -ltr
> dr-x------  1 root root 0 Sep 21 16:19
> S-1-5-21-947519380-1418259369-3847320399-1006/
> 
> dr-x------  1 root root 12288 Sep 21 16:19 De1/
> -r--------  1 root root    65 Sep 21 16:19 desktop.ini
> -r--------  1 root root   820 Sep 21 16:19 INFO2
> 
> # cat INFO2
> E:\Converted2??t'@??@???
> E:\Converted2[root at localhost S-1-5-21-947519380-1418259369-3847320399-1006]
> #
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You can't format a mounted drive. You have to umount it first and then
run mkfs.vfat if you want to have it be a FAT filesystem.