Found this old message about formatting a USB drive and it leaves a few questions for me:
I am going to format it as ext3 to keep permissions. I don't need to use this drive on any M$ system.
Do I unmount the drive after inserting it before I issue:
mkfs.ext3 /dev/sda1
BTW, when I do a 'man mkfs.ext3' it takes me to the man pages for mke2fs.
After the format is done, do I have to do anything to make sure everything is 'written' to the drive before pulling it from the system?
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.