How to format an external hard drive?

[Joey Prestia]

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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?
> 

First unplug the drive.

# fdisk -l

This will tell you which drive you dont want to format.

Plug in the other drive.

# fdisk -l

Now we know how your system recognizes the drive we want to format.

Now unmount the drive

# umount /dev/sdx        # or whatever its called in place of sdx

# fdsik /dev/sdx     # delete the ntfs part. and recreate it win95 LBA

# partprobe 	     # cause the kernel to reread the partition table

# mkfs.vfat /dev/sdx   # create a filesystem on it.

You should be able to remove and reinsert it and be in business.

I run Mandriva 2008 and have had problems with flash drives and fat
partitions and for me to be able to use them in both os's I had to
format them from windows.


- --
Joey Prestia
L. G. Mirror Coordinator
http://linuxamd.com
Main Site http://linuxgazette.net


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