On Sun, 2008-04-20 at 17:31 -0400, Alex Hewitt wrote: > On Sun, 2008-04-20 at 16:40 -0400, Ben Scott wrote: > > On Sun, Apr 20, 2008 at 3:42 PM, Bruce Labitt <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > > Now that I think about this, all that I want is a format that I can read > > > and write to for the WinXP machines that I have to live with and with > > > linux. > > > > Ah, then yah, FAT32 is likely your best bet. That seems to have > > become the "lingua franca" for filesystem interoperability. > > > > > Unfortunately when I received the disk it already was preformatted > > > NTFS. > > > > I'd say your best bet is to change the partition type of the > > existing partition to 0x0C using fdisk, and then format it using > > mkdosfs. > > Believe it or not, if you want a > 32 GB partition you need to do it > with Linux or a manufacturer supplied utility (Western Digital provides > one for some of their 2.5 external hard drives). Microsoft doesn't > believe you should be using > 32 GB FAT32 partitions even though the > file system will support operations much greater. > > -Alex
One other size limit - FAT32 file systems don't support file sizes > 4 GB. This can be a bit painful if for example you were using your FAT32 volume as a backup device and the backup attempts to put the entire backup into a single file. There are backup utilities that are aware of this size limitation and will automatically break the backup into < 4 GB chunks. -Alex > > > > > > I don't want a multiple partitions, just a single FAT32... So from your > > > description above I'd change the partition to "c" FAT32 LBA. And then > > > mkdosfs -F 32 ... > > > > I believe that's right. I haven't used mkdosfs in a while, but the > > man page agrees with you. :) > > > > > So what are options 1b and 1c ??? > > > > The "hidden" partition types were introduced by something to "hide" > > partitions from the OS. I forget what the something was -- it might > > have been the "Boot Manager" that came with OS/2. Some sther software > > tools followed suit (Partition Magic being one of them). Hiding > > partitions was needed because some versions of some Microsoft and/or > > IBM OSes had a terminal brain cramp if they saw more than one primary > > partition in a format they recognized. I forget which. Prolly > > Windows 95 or OS/2 2.0 or something like that. It hasn't been a > > problem in a while. > > > > -- Ben > > _______________________________________________ > > gnhlug-discuss mailing list > > gnhlug-discuss@mail.gnhlug.org > > http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss/ > > _______________________________________________ > gnhlug-discuss mailing list > gnhlug-discuss@mail.gnhlug.org > http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss/ _______________________________________________ gnhlug-discuss mailing list gnhlug-discuss@mail.gnhlug.org http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss/
