Jim -
Thank you! That is exactly what I needed. I had to make one change though since I use rsync to copy the data to the USB drive: I could not use vfat. Instead, I used ext3. With vfat, I got errors when it tried to do a chmod (expected).
I do have another fs question though. A couple of weeks ago I noticed that the USB icon was not on my desktop when I turned the drive on. Not knowing any better, I ran my rsync with the following:
/usr/bin/rsync -av --exclude=".*" -e ssh /home/ /media/usbdisk/
And it went ahead and did it's thing *but* the drive was inoperable...dead. Where did the data go?
And I noticed with the new drive, if I turn it off, rsync puts the data somewhere with
/usr/bin/rsync -av --exclude=".*" -e ssh /home/ /media/usbdisk1/
I need a FS 101 course!!
Todd
Jim Perrin wrote:
On 5/24/07, Todd Cary todd@aristesoftware.com wrote:
I have a USB drive that has been formatted as NTFS. Can I reformat it? I have identified these properties about it
/dev/sda1 /media/Extrnl_Bkup
Not sure what to do next since the GUI will not mount a NTFS disk (expected).
There are kernel ntfs modules, but really, the most universally supported option is to format with vfat. This way it will work on windows, mac and linux systems, fully supported all the way around. There are some limitations to fat32, 4G file sizes and the like.
The quick and easy way is mkfs.vfat /dev/sda1....tap fingers for a minute... then unplug/reinsert.