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 at 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. > >